I'll Walk You Home
by Justthisguyyouknow
Summary: The War is over and Toph decides it's time to go home. Sokka being a gentleman offers to walk her there, across the entire Earth Kingdom. Angst and Action ensues. TophxSokka
1. Chapter 1

I'll Walk You Home

Chapter 1

Part 1

Give me a hand

The door flew open and Suki stepped into the house. Her makeup was smeared with dirt on the right side of her face. The rest was disfigured by lines of sweat and possibly tears. Her armor and uniform were also stained with dirt, sweat, and possibly small drops of blood. She surveyed the room with a twitching eye, the twitch matching the pulsing of a vein in her forehead. Her eyes finally settled on the sole occupant of the room.

Toph sat in a wooden chair in the center of the living room of the Gaang's house in Ba Sing Sei, she had tilted the chair onto its back legs and she had her feet propped up on the table. She was oblivious as to who had just entered the house or Suki's condition since Toph had no physical contact with her element at the moment. This was intentional on her part because ever since they had returned from their training sessions that morning Aang and Katara were out in the small garden behind the house "talking" and Ty Lee had been in the bathroom "cleaning up" and Toph did not want to be aware of any of it.

Suki focused on the Blind Bandit and with a scathing voice asked,

"Do you have to put those filthy feet on every table in this house?"

Toph now knew who had opened the door, recognizing the voice, and the tone, one that Fangirl had been using more and more these days. Toph thought for a moment, then, in a serious contemplative voice answered,

"Yes…,"

The blind earthbender tried to add a little gratitude in at the end of the word as if to say to Suki thanks for making me realize the necessity of putting my feet up on tables.

Suki's response was to slam the door behind her and storm off down the hall that led to "girls' bedroom". Toph heard a gruff,

"Out of my way!" from Suki, along with the swish of the warrior girl's hakama, as she went down the hall.

That must mean that "Peach fuzz" this was Toph's and Sokka's new name for Ty Lee, had finally finished her primping and was out of the bathroom

Ty Lee had joined the group in Ba Sing Sei to receive special Kyoshi Warrior training from Fangirl before journeying with Suki and Sokka to Kyoshi Island to join the rest of the warriors. Since the bathroom was free, Toph thought about cleaning up, but she had taken a bath not that long ago _last week I think_ and she didn't stink that much, yet; besides, Suki was probably going to be using it in a minute or two and Toph really did not want to have to deal with an irate "Warrior Commander" right now. So she continued to sit with her feet up and started to pick her nose. That would be her concession to personal hygiene for the day.

Ty Lee skipped into the room, _no doubt wearing something skimpy and pink, whatever "pink" was_ Toph thought. The acrobat was braiding her hair, and saw Toph sitting at the table, "Peachfuzz" did a one handed cartwheel, her right hand still holding the end of her braid, over to the table and sat down in the chair next to the earthbender.

"She really does not like to lose" Ty Lee said in a conspiratorial tone to Toph, referring to her new commander. She then looked towards the door and asked,

"I wonder where 'Cutie' is? It was just the two of them still training when we left."

Ty Lee tied off the end of her braid and flung the plait of long brown hair over her shoulder as she leaned in to quietly suggest to Toph,

"Or maybe we should call him 'Dreamy' now." The new warrior finished this last with a little giggle.

Toph did not know who this "We" was. She had never referred to Sokka as "Cutie" and she would never in her life refer to him as "Dreamy". She would call him "Meathead", "Snoozles", "Captain Boomerang", or maybe just "Stupid" but never "Dreamy". She did dream about him, but she would NEVER tell anyone about that.

Ty Lee rested her elbows on the table and placed her chin in her hands, and with a far away look on her face said,

"He really has changed since I first saw him."

Toph sighed, this was going to take a while since "Pinkle toes" (another name Sokka had for Ty Lee) had been in the bathroom for the last two hours with no one to talk to, (Ty Lee never talked with anyone, she was only capable of talking to people) Toph realized that she was going to be subjected to two hours of being talked to by the acrobat. Not only that, but since the earthbender was a girl, it was going to be two hours of "girl talk". All about feelings, who's with who, boys, do you think he likes me, and, since it was Ty Lee, most of it was going to be about Sokka, which was just going to be painful.

As the two girls sat at the table they heard the door to their common bedroom open and slam shut, then the door to the bathroom farther down the hall open and slam. Toph was glad she had decided to stay where she was and pick her nose.

The brown haired girl leaned into Toph and whispered to the earthbender,

"Not going too well at the moment, is it?"

Toph brushed her black hair over her ear to cover the blush that was starting to come up onto her face. She had been thinking the same thing over the last week or so. At first Sokka had spent all his time with Suki, but over the last few weeks he had begun training with other members of the group. He had even learned some basic knife throwing from Mai and double sword training with Zuko, before the two of them had left to return to the Fire Nation.

"Meathead", for all his stupidity and clumsy goofing around, was a real sponge for knowledge. As his leg healed and the cast came off he trained more and more. He had studied Chi blocking and gymnastics with Ty Lee, which had caused some caustic comments from Suki. Toph had taught him earthbending. _He__ totally deserved that bite I gave him._ Aang showed him airbending. and he learned waterbending from Katara. Of course "Boomerang Boy" could not bend but he had a way of adapting bending moves and techniques into his other combat skills. He was like a sponge, but when you squeezed him you never knew what would come out. Usually something entirely new and unexpected.

He had spent a lot of time learning the techniques of the Kyoshi Warriors from Suki, but their training sessions, as Sokka got better and better, had become less training classes and more bouts. Eventually turning into flat out brawls towards the end, escalated by Suki herself. As Ty Lee had observed the Kyoshi Captain did not like to lose.

"He must be a good kisser. Or else they wouldn't still be together." Ty lee whispered to the Blind Bandit.

_Great!_ Toph thought , _now I am going to be regaled by Pinkle toes , talking about Sokka kissing._ Toph did not want to think about "Stupid" kissing, well actually she thought about it quite a lot, more and more recently, but she definitely did not want to hear about it, especially from Ty Lee.

"In the circus," the acrobat continued, "everyone said that the water people were the best kissers, especially the Southern ones." She moved even closer to Toph's ear and lowered her voice even more to say,

"They used to call the Water tribers 'wets'" She giggled at this and covered her mouth as if she had said something dirty.

"They said once you have a wet kiss you can never forget it."

Ty Lee squealed in Toph's ear after this last revelation. Then she added in a dreamy voice,

"I'd really like a wet kiss from cutie."

Toph covered her ear at the squeal, ostensibly to protect her sensitive hearing, but in reality she was trying to cover the blush, which had decided that her face was just insufficient space for it and had decided to move to her ears and then make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up just for good measure. A "wet" kiss from Sokka was a little too much for Toph to think about at the moment.

Ty Lee was just leaning back in to impart some new information to Toph when they both heard the front door open. Toph still couldn't tell who was entering the house but it really could only be one person, and her suspicions were confirmed when she heard her conspiratorial companion say.

"Well, hello there… oh my goodness Sokka what happened?"

Sokka stood in the doorway in full Kyoshi Warrior array. His makeup and uniform, like Suki's were also smeared and stained with dirt, sweat, and truth be told, tears, but unlike Suki, there was no doubt about the blood. The front of his face, his keikogi robe and his armor were covered in it.

"Noffin" he said in a nasal voice "I'th fime"

Ty Lee jumped up and ran to the only male Kyoshi Warrior in the world and grabbed the equipment bag, he was obviously having trouble with, off of his right shoulder and placed it on the floor.

Toph, although she could not see Sokka decided that the sound of all this was worth the noise of Ba Sing Se and put her feet onto the stone floor of the house.

"Fine!" Ty Lee screeched. "You're covered in blood!"

"Blood?" Toph asked

"Oh… thaa… a, well… a… Sudi brode my node"

"Again!" The two girls echoed one another.

Sokka gave an embarrassed little shrug which he followed with a tired "Ow".

Ty Lee took the Watertribesman's right arm and helped him limp into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. Toph came up to help him on his left side but he said with a small note of panic.

"Nodd the lefffd."

Toph realized that Sokka was holding his left arm stiffly to his side and was in obvious pain, so she backed off, while the brown haired acrobat helped Sokka to the table. He did not sit, but he put his right hand on the table and shifted as much weight off of his left leg as he could.

His leg had healed from when it had been broken during the battle of the air fleet, but it was still bothering him. He had made, well not made exactly, designed would be more accurate, a brace to help support his bad leg. Toph had metal bended the steel parts, and Sokka had had a boot maker put together the leather parts for him. It helped quite a bit but after a long day of very physical training his leg hurt like blazes.

Sokka reached up and tried to remove his head dress but was having trouble trying to do it one handed. The apprentice warrior beside him noticed and said.

"Let me help you with that"

Deftly, Ty Lee untied the head dress and put it on the table, Sokka's weapons, fans, armor and keikogi robe soon followed. She tried to untie his Hakama as well but he stopped her there, shirtless was one thing but he didn't want to be standing in his underwear in front of two girls even if one of them was blind.

Ty paused for a moment, yes Sokka had changed since the first time she had seen him in Omashu. He was no longer the skinny armed boy but was rapidly growing into a hard muscled, young man. She rested her hand on his chest feeling his chi course through his body, the warmth of his chest spreading to her hand and up into her own chest. She looked up and saw his impossibly deep, blue eyes looking into her own. There was a question in his eyes, and she thought of "wet" kisses in warm nights, to match the warmth of his skin.

"Dhy… Somethin wrong?" he asked.

Shocked, Ty Lee shook her head and returned to the here and now. She felt a furious blush cover her face up to the roots of her hair and down her throat to her chest.

"Your shoulder" she managed to choke out, "You've hurt your bad shoulder again."

"Yethh" he agreed.

"I'm going to get Katara" Ty Lee said as she stepped back and then bounded out of the room heading for the back of the house.

Toph turned her head towards the young man. She could now feel him, with her feet on the ground, but she could not get the fine detail that she would have gotten had she been able to see him. She could smell the sweat, dirt, and blood, and she could feel the way he was lopsided, favoring his left side, but she could not "see" the extent of his injuries.

Sokka knew that Toph was "looking" at him so he turned to her, smiled a weak, little smile and said

"No probemm"

The two friends stood that way for a moment, then Sokka pulled out the chair in front of him with his good arm and sat down. He gave a sigh of relief as he took the weight off of his leg, then he looked towards his friend and asked,

"Coulth you give me a hanth Thoph?"

"Sure" she replied.

"Coulth you take my leff arm up by my bithep, and gently pull down and back when I tell you to?"

Toph stepped in and touched Sokka's arm, she felt him wince, then he helped by curling his lower arm around her waist. She felt her heart beat rise at the contact, and her brain start to circle the thoughts of his warm skin. Sokka was always warm to the touch, not hot like Zuko, or cool like Katara, always warm and inviting. _Stop It! _she shouted to herself.

She sensed Sokka curl his right hand into a fist and he forced it up into his left arm pit, it was obvious from his intake of breath that this was painful but he forced himself to do it.

"Okay, could you gently pull down and back on my arm?"

Toph gripped his upper arm. She felt the scars left by her teeth on his bicep. _It was his own stupid fault, he shouldn't have picked me up, how was I supposed to know it would become infected_. She had bit him very hard and still remembered the taste of his blood in her mouth before she had buried him in the arena floor. _He dug himself out eventually_ she told herself.

Toph began to pull as directed, down and back.

"Yeth, like that." Sokka encouraged her.

"Harder" he suggested. There was a lot of pain in his voice but he wanted her to continue.

Toph lifted her right foot off the ground and planted it firmly in Sokka's side. She then started to really put her back into pulling on his arm.

"Yeth… thathh it!"

"More?" Toph asked a little breathlessly.

"Yethh… Oh yethh… oh…. Oh…. Now twist it a little…."

Toph could hear the strain in Sokka's voice, he was almost panting as he continued to encourage her efforts.

"Yeth… thathss it… like thath… more… harder, twisth, more, harder,almosth there, Oh Tui, almosth, twisth, pull,twisth,almosth,Yesth,YESTH!,YESTHHHHHH!"

Toph felt something slip in Sokka's shoulder and snap into place. She almost fell onto her butt with the release of tension but he was able to catch her with his restored arm and hold her up while she got her right leg under her again. The warrior pulled her into a hug and told her

"That wath great Toph, you're the beth, no lie, you're the beth!"

While they were hugging they both heard the bathroom door slam shut, they must not have heard it open while Toph was helping reset Sokka's shoulder, so they didn't know how long who ever had come out of the bathroom had been in the hallway. Then they both heard the girls' bedroom door bang open and immediately after heard it slam shut, as if someone had kicked it very hard.

Sokka turned to Toph and shrugged, to which the earthbender replied in kind, though she thought she knew who was slamming doors in the house. About this time Sokka saw Katara come out of the rear hall. As she entered the room she was coughing loudly and had her hand up to her eyes so she could only see a little bit of the floor in front of her. Behind Katara, Sokka could see that Ty Lee was, with a curious, excited, expression on her face, hopping up and down so she could see over his sister's shoulder.

"Sokka are you OK?" Katara tentatively asked.

"Much bether now, thanths to Toph!" he answered.

To Be Continued

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Updated Note: I have edited this Chapter to clean it up. A huge thank you to **Vox Populi** who did a tremendous amount of work proof reading this story for me. (I incorporated most of your corrections but I left a few of my original tenses and words in just because I liked how they sounded.:-)

This is my first attempt at putting a fan fiction up here. Be Gentle. This is a Post War Tokka story about a journey Sokka and Toph take as she returns home to confront her parents. Hopefully it will be fun and have angst and action.

Criticism is welcome, I would like to get better at this.

Thanks,


	2. Chapter 2

I'll Walk You Home

Chapter 1

Part 2

The Party's Over

Katara peeked out between her fingers and saw Toph standing beside Sokka who was sitting bare chested in a chair by the table. They were both giving her very odd, curious looks, as if to ask what's with you?.

She could see that Sokka was a mess. His Kyoshi makeup had always seemed a little strange to Katara and now that it was all smeared and bloody it was even more bizarre, and his poor nose was at a very strange angle.

Katara gave a sigh of relief, behind her she heard Ty Lee sigh as well, though it sounded more like a sigh of disappointment than of relief.

"Ty Lee could you please bring me a bowl of clean water?" Katara asked as she moved towards her brother. Sokka was going to need some healing. Ty Lee did a series of cartwheels out of the room and into the kitchen.

As Katara approached him, Sokka moved his left arm from around Toph's waist and began to scratch her back. He had finally realized, after all these months, that Toph could not see the visual cues he used so much. Sokka's usual thank you was to give a wide grin, or a goofy smile, with perhaps a thumbs-up added in. The blind girl obviously could not pick up on this, and recently Sokka had determined to try to express himself in a more tactile fashion with her.

He had tried various things, like patting her on the shoulder, or stroking her arm, (he had avoided playful punches because he knew that would result in immediate and painful retribution). These just seemed to irritate the earthbender. When he first scratched her back she had made a sound which Sokka interpreted as mild disinterest. For the Water Tribe boy this was a great victory, everything he did seemed to irritate the touchy blind girl, so if she didn't mind something he did, he chalked it up as a big plus.

Sokka liked being liked. He was not a master bender, or a skilled warrior, he felt he did not have much to offer, unlike everyone else he knew now, so to him the only thing he had was that he was likable, and it was obvious to him that Toph did not like him. She was constantly criticizing him, hitting him, and calling him names. This hurt him quite a bit, not that he would ever admit it to anyone, but he liked Toph and wanted her to like him back, but it was very obvious that she actively disliked him, and the dislike had been growing recently. So the fact that she didn't mind him scratching her back was a great victory, and he continued to use it as a way of saying thank you.

Toph felt Sokka's arm move from around her waist. _Finally,_ she told herself, now she could relax, the blush would go away and she could be herself again. Then she felt his hand move up to her shoulder blade. _Oh no! Meathead is going to scratch my back._ He had started doing this recently and it drove her mad. It sent a warm shiver up her spine and caused goose flesh to rise on her arms and neck, her heart would leap into her throat, she would be unable to breath, and she would have to repress a moan of pleasure every time he did it.

Sokka began to scratch, and Toph began to melt. It was the most wonderful feeling. He did it just right, not too hard, but not too soft. His nails were just the right length for a good scratch. It was the most luxurious feeling in the world, especially since it was Sokka doing it. When he did it, all she wanted to do was curl up next to him and purr.

_BLIND BANDITS DO NOT PURR!_ she shouted to herself. Toph was able to strangle the sigh/moan/purr of pleasure her body was trying to release and all that came out was a sort of non committal

"Errrrahhh…"

_Stupid body, stupid "Stupid", but most of all stupid crush_ Toph told herself, but it felt so good that she could not bring herself to bat his hand away as she would have liked. Too soon it ended with a nasal,

"Thanths a lot Toph" from Sokka.

Katara, during this, had walked up and looked at her brother's ruined nose.

"Sokka this is what, the third time you've had a training accident? You really need to be more careful, I'm not sure how many times I am going to be able to fix this."

"You're a great healer, Shish, thish wonth be any probemm for you." Sokka replied with confidence.

"I only had three classes in healing, Sokka" she replied as she tentatively reached for his nose. She added,

"After you finish raising the fleet you should take some time to travel to the North to have a real healer look at your leg and now your nose. Also what's this about a bad shoulder?"

"My shoulther is finm. I justh hurth ith a while ago and iths' a little weak is all, ith'll be fime." He was then cut off as Katara tried to rearrange his nose so that his face would resemble its' original configuration.

Toph heard a wet grinding sound which caused her skin to crawl, and she unconsciously let out a disturbed…

"ehwuuuu that sounds awful!"

"You shoulth hear ith fromm my sithd." The boy told her.

"Quiet! This is hard enough without you making jokes" Katara told the two of them, then she added, "Ty Lee do you have that water I asked for?"

"Right here!"

Katara turned to the sound of the acrobat's voice and saw a bowl of water at eye level held up by a pair of slippered feet. Ty Lee had apparently walked over from the kitchen on her hands. The healer bent a portion of the water out of the bowl and onto her hands where it began to glow. She then applied it to the boy's broken nose.

Ty Lee used her feet to toss the bowl up into the air, then flipped from standing on her hands to standing on her feet, caught the bowl as it fell, then caught the left over water in the bowl. After all that she looked over Katara's shoulder to see how the healing was going.

Toph wasn't sure what had just happened since so much of it had happened in the air and out of range of her earthbending senses. She just knew that it was getting crowded around Sokka so she backed up, then finally decided to leave the room entirely and go out to the small garden in the back of the house. Now that "Sugar Queen" was inside, "Twinkle Toes" would not be far behind and she would have the garden all to herself. She wanted some alone time to do some thinking.

Katara moved her hands over Sokka's nose and after less than a minute the glowing stopped and the boy felt the water run down his face. He reached up and felt his nose which was still tender but at least felt secure on his face now. He pulled the two wads of paper he had used to stop the bleeding out of his nostrils and took an experimental breath in and out. It all seemed to be working again. He gave his sister a big grin and a thumbs up, with a

"Thanks sis!" At the end for good measure.

"As cute as ever, maybe even better" Ty Lee enthused from over the healer's shoulder, "Except for the dirt and makeup, and the blood." She finished rather lamely.

"Well, you better get cleaned up, you have to help me make supper." She told her newly repaired sibling.

"Ahhh, Katara do I have to? I'm injured and besides I'm a terrible cook." Sokka whined.

"If you want meat then you are going to have to prepare and cook it."

Sokka stood up from the chair but kept his knees bent and rounded his arms taking his cave man stance and dropping his voice into a low register said

"Sokka like meat, meat good!" He then stood up to his full height and pulled Katara into a warm hug telling her "Thanks a lot sis".

As the warrior released the healer Ty Lee held up her arms to him and began hopping up and down saying

"What about me, I brought the water"

Sokka took the acrobats hand and, bowing politely to her, raised her hand to his forehead and said

"Thank you, Ty Lee"

"You're welcome" she answered while returning the bow, but then she added "but I'd rather have a hug".

"I'm not much of a hugger" Sokka explained.

The young man blushed from the attention of the pretty young woman, and to cover his embarrassment began to bustle with the weapons and equipment that was on the table. He looked up trying to find Toph so he could give her another back scratch thank you but she was nowhere to be seen._ Didn't even wait to see if I was ok_ he told himself sadly.

"I should get cleaned up" he mumbled.

"Oh let me help the wounded warrior!" Ty Lee gushed.

The pink-clad-wonder spun and did a back flip with a 180 degree hop/turn at the end then went into a handstand walkover and arrived at the equipment duffle that she had earlier left by the door.

Katara rolled her eyes at the antics of the new member of the group. _Where does she get the energy?_ the waterbender asked herself.

Sokka had bundled his gear up into his keikogi and pulled it up into his arms. As he turned for the hall to the bedrooms Ty Lee pulled the strap of the equipment bag up onto her shoulder. The bag's weight caused her to list to the side and she refrained from any gymnastics as she walked over to Sokka and put her hand on his bare muscular back.

Katara gave the scantily clad one a sharp look, and Ty Lee removed her hand as the two Kyoshi Warriors trudge down the hall to the boys' bedroom door. The blue eyes of the healer followed them, as her brother opened the door and walked in, those same eyes opened wider as the acrobat followed him into the room.

The waterbender waited a few moments before she called out,

"Ty Lee you can help with supper too."

It was another moment before "pinkletoes" appeared in the door way with a

"See ya, Cutie."

Then she bounded down the hall past Katara and on into the kitchen.

Sokka stepped out of the doorway next, still dressed in his hakama, with a large towel over his shoulder. He looked to his sister, shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. She shrugged back and turned for the kitchen, but before she could get there she saw her new boyfriend come out of the back hall way.

"Is Sokka alright?" Aang asked her.

"So far, it's everyone else I'm worried about," she told him as she took his hand and led him into the kitchen.

Sokka turned and limped down the hall to the wash room at the far end. _Ty just loves to embarrass me_ he told himself _it must be the high point of her day to make me look like a complete fool in front of everybody. Toph can't be bothered to even see if I'm ok. Suki keeps beating the crap out of me ever since…_ he didn't finish that thought. It was not a place he wanted to go right now. Dejectedly he opened the door to the wash room to get himself cleaned up.

Toph sat on a cushion on a stone bench in the garden, her feet were on the ground and the vibrations of the massive city came up through them and into her head causing a dull throbbing ache. _At least it's better than hearing "Sugar Queen" grinding Sokka's broken bones together_. The sound of that had almost made her sick.

_By Oma I hate this place!_ This city was too large, too full of noise, too full of rules. She had no confidence in the ruling council, even with Aang watching them they would end up running the city just the same way it had always been run, and even if King Kuei returned she knew it wouldn't get any better. The Earth King was a complete fool and simpleton.

It was so much better back during the war when it had been just the four of them. Not that the war was good but the four of them had been perfect together and they had been free. _Katara and Aang, Sokka and me_ she told herself. That had been the best time of her life.

Sokka had been so understanding and loyal to her. She could open herself up to him and he opened himself to her. He had never treated her the way her parents had but he still had always been there for her, whenever she had needed him.

Toph pulled the space-earth armband off of her left arm and held it in her hands, feeling its smooth strange metal. It was truly unique, there was nothing like it in the whole world and he had given it to her.

Toph had thought for a time that all boys were like Sokka, well Aang was different but he was the Avatar, of course he would be different from everyone else.

After the Day of Black Sun there had been the other boys, but they had not really been part of the group. They were always off playing around the temple, and they had been nothing like Sokka.

Then Zuko had joined the group. She thought he would be just like the only real boy she had ever known. She soon found out that Sokka was as unique as the metal of her armband.

Her "Life Changing Field Trip With Zuko" had been a complete disaster, he couldn't care less about her. She had opened herself up to him and he had ignored her. If it wasn't about Zuko, Zuko wasn't interested.

The field trip that had actually changed her life had been Sokka's trip with Zuko. That was the trip that ended all her hopes and plans, and dreams. It was the trip that had brought Suki back, and the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors had taken Sokka from her, and now "Fangirl" was taking him away to her own private little island. Taking him away forever, and all Toph would have would be the armband.

Toph felt her eyes begin to burn and her throat start to close up. She felt the tears start to run down her face. She put her armband back on and rubbed the tears away.

She decided then and there that she was leaving. She wasn't going to wait around to be hurt even more. The war was over, the Gaang was over, it was time for her to go home.

To Be Continued

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Updated Note: Once again this has been cleaned up thanks to all the work of **Vox Populi** who was generous enough to proof read the chapter for me. Any errors still there are mine and mine alone.

I put notes at the end, This is all part of the set up for the actual story which will begin in around chapter 3 which should be chapter 4 by Fan Fiction.

Thank you for all the reviews and favorites. I hope you will stick with the story and that you will enjoy it.

Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

I'll Walk You Home pt 3

Chapter 2

Part 1

Ulu

Ty Lee hated doing chores. She had been raised in a wealthy family and had servants for all the menial tasks around the house, and even with five identical sisters, none of them had had to do any cleaning or cooking. Her time in prison had been a revelation to both Mai and herself, and she did not enjoy it.

She was helping Katara wash vegetables for dinner when Sokka walked into the kitchen. He had his leg brace on and was still limping slightly when he came in, but he looked much better, having washed off all the makeup, dirt, blood, and sweat. He had changed into his blue, sleeveless watertribe wrap-around-top and his blue, drawstring pants; he had not bothered with his arm wraps and Ty Lee was mesmerized by the expanse of warm, brown skinned, well muscled arms that she was suddenly exposed to.

"Meat!" was all he said, while he tied his hair back into his traditional wolf's tail.

Katara looked up but before she could start issuing instructions, there was a chiterring from the window and a streak of white and brown flew through the air and landed on the young man's head.

"Hey, little buddy" Sokka greeted the lemur.

The giant eared, flying beast looked down into the tribesman's face and then began to pull on his robe obviously looking for something. Momo climbed down inside Sokka's top looking for any treats the boy may have been hiding.

"Sorry buddy, not this time maybe later." He told the little beast.

Eventually Momo climbed out of the young man's clothes and hanging on his chest looked the pony tailed one in the eye and began an unhappy series of chirps and barks. Sokka responded in his own series of sounds mimicking the lemur's and eventually the boy pointed to the window. The pet sounded disappointed but then flapped his wings and flew over to sit on the sill, looking expectantly at his friend.

"Grrrereap chit chip." was all the tribesman said.

Ty Lee watched, giggling the entire time. She thought it was a little creepy to have an animal crawling around inside your clothes, but Sokka and Momo looked so cute that she couldn't help but enjoy their antics.

Katara was not amused. She pointed to a table by the stove where she had laid out a series of bowls containing eggs, vegetables, cold rice, and one containing a piece of some animal.

"There are the ingredients, and you can use that wok. Make fried rice, you shouldn't ruin something as simple as that."

"Aye, Aye sister dear." he replied and took his station by the table.

Katara criticized her brother's cooking more out of habit than out of need. In the last few weeks she had forced him to do more of the cooking by insisting that he cook any meat dishes, so necessity forced him into the kitchen, whining the whole way. He learned quickly and was able to make simple dishes and was actually beginning to experiment with more complex and creative receipts and not doing a bad job.

"knife?... knife? I need a knife ...there was something about a knife,,, A Knife!"

Sokka's voice went from: searching, to questioning, to introspective, to discovery as he said the word over and over. Finally, he looked in a leather bound note pad he had created by sewing (after the pants incident early in their travels, he had been forced to learn how to sew) together a sheaf of papers that he had cut up for the purpose. The pad was tied to his belt and he was constantly making notations in it as ideas struck him. He had invented a device he called a "charcoal pen" just for writing on this pad.

"I am such an idiot!" He said with a note of revelation.

"I think we are all well aware of that." Snarked Katara.

"I'll be right back!" her brother shouted as he ran out of the kitchen.

Momo chirruped and flew after him. The two girls looked at one another questioningly but both turned towards the door as they heard a loud thump followed by an informational,

"Ow"

From the next room, then more running and chirruping.

Katara had noticed that recently Sokka no longer complained about pain, probably because he experienced so much of it. He seemed to feel that there really was no point in complaining, but he also must have felt it was his duty to inform the rest of them that he was experiencing it. So his "ows" had become not so much exclamations as they were now more informational statements made in passing.

The waterbender and the acrobat returned to washing vegetables and after about a minute they heard another informational,

"Ow"

From the next room, then a confused and questioning

"Who keeps moving this table?"

Finally, Sokka reappeared in the door, with the lemur on his shoulder, its tail wrapped around his neck as if an adjunct to the ivory choker that the tribesman habitually wore, on his long sensual neck iStop that!/i Ty lee told herself.

In his hands Sokka was carrying a package wrapped in a roll of cloth. Momo chittered expectantly but the boy said,

"Not for you buddy, back to the window."

Momo disappointedly flew back to his spot on the sill.

The young man approached his sister, unwrapping the bundle as he went, and offered her something Ty Lee could not see.

"I finished this for you just yesterday, and forgot to give it to you. I wanted you to have it before I left with Suki and Ty Lee for Kyoshi Island."

Katara took the proffered item and in a quiet, almost sad voice said,

"Oh, Sokka. It's beautiful!"

The waterbender held the item up for Ty Lee to finally see. To "Pinkle toes" it was not particularly beautiful but looked like a rather crude hunk of metal that had been cut out of a circle of steel and then had had a handle riveted onto the smaller side of it.

"It's an ulu." Katara explained to the acrobat.

She turned it over in her hands as she examined it,

"I lost mine long ago in our travels. I never thought I would have another one until I got back home."

The young woman handed the ulu to Ty Lee so she could get a better look at it. As the young Kyoshi Warrior examined the "knife", (she wasn't sure if you could call it a knife. She had seen a lot of knives in her young life, many of them going past her head, thanks to Mai and her practicing.) but she had never seen anything like this before.

As Ty Lee looked it over closely she realized her first assessment was very wrong. In its simplicity and curves it really was beautiful. The steel that comprised the blade had dark wavy lines running through it that paralleled the arc of the blade. She traced one with her finger, they really looked like… well waves on the sea.

Sokka noticed her moving finger and explained.

"That is called the water pattern, according to the blade smith who showed me how to fold and weld the steel. I ruined a lot of billets to get it right."

"You made this yourself?" Katara asked her brother.

"Well kind of," the boy explained, "I asked a blade smith to make it for me but he said he couldn't understand my drawings, so he said he would show me how to make it instead. I think it got reversed at some point. He helped so much that I think it ended up with him making it and me helping him, but any way here it is. Oh, and I made a scabbard for it too."

With this last Sokka handed his sister a leather scabbard with a long strap of leather attached so she could wear it around her neck.

"Yeah... I was going to use ivory for the ulu, just like back home, but everything here is backwards. You can't find any ivory but they have plenty of metal, so I made it out of that. I hope you like it."

Katara pulled Sokka into a fierce hug telling him in a tear choked voice,

"I love it! You're the best big brother ever!"

Ty Lee looked at the brother and sister hugging and felt tightness in her own chest. She had never gotten along with her own sisters, in fact she had run away to the circus to get away from her own family, but right now she wished she had a big brother who went to all the trouble of learning a new skill just to make his sister a present.

To Be Continued

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

New Note: Once again updated thanks to all the hard work of **Vox Populi**. (Sorry I like had so much. Oh, the "Pants Incident" is at the start of "Kyoshi Warriors".)

Comments: This part got too long so I had to break it up. This seemed like the best place to make the break, the next part should be up soon.

All comments are more than welcome.

Hope you like it.


	4. Chapter 4

I'll Walk You Home pt 4

Chapter 2

Part 2

Air Bender Style

It took a little while to get back to preparing supper after that.

Ty Lee noticed that the two watertribe youths where expert at using knives and other utensils in the kitchen. Sokka especially, he may have appeared to be a big goof but put a weapon or tool in his hand and he suddenly became very deft and skilled.

She watched as he cut the meat off the bones of the joint. It was done with precision, speed, and economy. Ty Lee commented,

"You've done that before"

"A couple of times." Sokka replied.

"He's been doing it since he was four." Katara added

"Four?" the acrobat asked.

"Three and a half, actually." was the tribesman's reply. Then he commented,

"I can't wait to hear what dad is going to say when you tell him you are going to be a vegetarian, sis."

"Intellectually it just makes sense." Katara replied.

"Yeah if you want to starve to death." was her brother's sardonic reply.

"There are plenty of things you can eat besides meat." Ty Lee said, coming to the defense of her new friend.

"Not at the South Pole." was Sokka's reply. Then seriously asked Katara,

"What are you going to do? Aang can't live with the tribe if he can't eat meat or fish, that's all we have to eat. If you stay with him you won't be able to come home except for short visits when you bring your own food. Dad will not be happy about that."

Katara stopped putting the vegetables in the steamers and thought for a moment. She had not considered any of what her brother had just said. Only now did she realize that if she indeed stayed with Aang she would be banishing herself from her home. Yes, she could go back for short visits, but she could never really live there again, not with the Avatar. It gave her a funny feeling in her stomach, and she felt a little faint. Her life would be very different. To never really be able to go home again, to never be able to spend but the briefest of times with her Gran Gran, her father, and her brother, it really was a whole new world she was choosing if she chose to stay with Aang.

Sokka was still involved with his task and did not notice his sister's melancholy thoughtfulness. He added jokingly,

"I just can't see Aang out on the ice hunting and killing some furry 'little buddy' of his."

"So you don't have any source of food besides hunting?" Ty Lee asked surprised.

"Nope." Sokka answered, "We live on an ice sheet floating on the ocean. Nothing grows there, no grain, no trees, no nothing. The only source of life is in the sea so we hunt and fish. "

"But now that the war is over won't things change?" the girl in pink asked.

"Maybe."

Katara grasped at the "maybe" as though it were a lifeline,

"Sure," the waterbender said, "with the war over there will be trade again, we will be able to get all sorts of stuff from the earthkingdom again, like rice, and grain, and iron, and everything. It will be a whole new world."

"Except for the airbenders." Ty lee said sadly.

"Oh they'll be back in a few years." Sokka said with confidence.

"But we were taught that they were wiped out by Fire Lord Sozin." Ty Lee objected.

"Yes, Aang is all alone in the world." Katara added.

The waterbender felt guilty thinking of her own loss of home and family in self-imposed exile without even thinking of her boyfriend's loss of those same things, of his loss of his entire culture, without the chance for short visits. She determined then and there to always stay with him, so that he would always have someone.

"Fire Nation propaganda." The young swordsman said. He stopped his preparations and turned to the two girls to explain,

"Who knows, Sozin may have even believed that he had wiped out the Air Nomads, they probably put on a pretty good show for him, but they will be back. It may take a few years before they come out of hiding, but once they realize that the war is actually over and that the Avatar is back, and it is not just some Fire Nation trick, they will start to reveal themselves."

"What are you talking about?" Katara asked him.

"Well have you ever seen the way Aang fights when he is being all airbendery?" he asked the two of them.

"Of course!" His sister said.

Ty Lee nodded in agreement.

"OK, so think about it. What is the airbender style of fighting?"

The two girls thought for a moment but before they could answer the tribesman continued,

"It's a soft style, full of avoids and light parries. Here let me show you. Ty, come here, you can be the Fire Nation."

Sokka walked into a more open area of the kitchen and beckoned the young girl to join him.

"Why not, I am Fire Nation after all." she said as she moved in front of her fellow Kyoshi Warrior.

"Not _from_ the Fire Nation, you _are_ the Fire Nation, or better yet, you be Zuko, he is a good example of firebendery style. Ok so take a stance against me."

Ty Lee assumed her normal stance which was a light forward stance, her feet about as far apart as the width of her shoulders, left foot back, her right a little forward of her body, with both of her hands up in fists about shoulder level.

"No, no, not _your_ normal stance." the swordsman said "Remember you are Zuko, a firebender, you need to take his stance."

Sokka assumed a horse riding stance with his legs a little more than shoulder width apart, facing square on to the light footed acrobat, with his right fist back at his right hip and his left extend out in front.

"Like this," he said. Then he added in a fair copy of Zuko's voice "and don't forget to get all self-involved, morose, and think only about regaining your honor, even when you know it's wrong."

Katara laughed at the face her brother was putting on. Sokka was a good mimic and could look and sound like someone else, with just enough exaggeration to really capture the person. Ty Lee, who liked Zuko, a lot, was not as amused but she mirrored the tribesman's stance.

"Good," Sokka complimented her, "though you could look a little more depressed, think that Mai is your girlfriend"

Katara found this last very amusing and laughed at the joke. Ty Lee did not find it funny at all and shot Sokka a nasty look while she started rise up out of the stance.

"Sorry… sorry," he said as he put his hands on Ty Lee's shoulders and gently put her back into her stance. "I was just kidding. They are both really nice people and good friends, I just can't pass up a bad joke. Please…"

For the "Please" the young man put on his best puppy dog face, and although not as good as Aang's it was still pretty good and Ty Lee moved back into the stance he had shown her.

"Thanks, now I'll be Aang. All light and airbendery, and airheadery."

Sokka hopped up into the air and came down in a close, back "T" stance with his right foot back, toe pointing to the side and his left foot almost touching the right with his toe facing towards his opponent. His hand were open with his right down around his waist and his left up around his shoulder. On his face he wore a very silly grin which looked amazingly like the Avatar's.

Ty Lee broke her stance when she looked at her opponent. She began to giggle uncontrollably. Katara found that this was an unkind representation of a very spiritual young man who, as the savior of the world after all, deserved some respect.

"Come on, come on, work with me here," Sokka chided Ty Lee and tried to get her into her stance again. "This is an important educational and scientific demonstration we're doing here."

"Pinkle toes" resumed her stance but every time she looked at the "Airbender's" face she broke into giggles again. Finally, she resorted to looking at the brown pecs that were showing through the v neck of Sokka's robe. This ended the giggles but caused her other problems in concentration.

Katara was somewhat mollified but still felt a little peeved at her brother's impression of her boyfriend.

"Good, now pretend to hit me with a fire blast using a reverse punch. That seems to be a favorite with Fire Benders." Sokka told her. He illustrated this by taking her stance and making a forward sliding step of his right foot, passing through center, then to directly in front of his right shoulder, while his foot moved he punched his right hand out rotating it 180 degrees while bringing his left fist back to his hip with a reverse rotation.

He resumed his T stance and waited. Ty Lee executed the reverse punch with a fair amount of speed, but instead of blocking the punch Sokka did a low sliding hop to his left and forward, passing the punch and moving to his opponent's right side. A second balestra with a turn at the end landed him directly behind the young girl, facing the same way she was.

The acrobat turned to her right, but the young swordsman turned with her, bending his knees and ducking so that he was slightly shorter than the young girl in front of him. Frustrated, she turned to her left, but Sokka turned as well, always starting the movement with the same sliding hop steps he had used to get behind her in the first place.

Ty was becoming more and more frustrated with each twist and turn. She knew Sokka was behind her but she could not see or catch him, no matter how fast she turned.

Katara watched the demonstration and was surprised by her brother's movement. She did not expect him to be that fast. He had his hands up, mere millimeters from his opponents back but he never touched her. Katara realized that he really did move the same way that Aang moved in a fight when the young Avatar was using Airbending. She knew that her brother had been training with the airbender as he had been training with everyone else, including herself, but she had not realized how accomplished he had become in emulating their styles. He was nowhere near as good as her boyfriend but he had obviously picked up on the basics and understood the principles and was able to use them in this instance.

Sokka knew his time avoiding the much faster and more skilled acrobat was limited so to end the illustration he reached forward and tickled her bare sides. This caused her to squeal and jump forward out of his grasp. She turned and faced him, and he smiling, bowed in Fire Nation style and said,

"Thank you for helping me."

The pink clad wonder instead of bowing leapt forward and, throwing her arms around his neck, pulled herself into a tight hug onto the "Wet" Warrior.

"That was amazing!" she squealed into his ear.

Sokka instinctively put his arms around her waist and hugged her back. He quickly realized that his arms and hands were in contact with bare skin, a natural result of the fashions the young women enjoyed wearing. This caused blood to rush to certain areas of the young man's body, primarily his face and large ears. He desperately began to move his hands trying to move them to a cloth covered portion of her lithe frame, but just as he was about to grab hold of a new part of her, he realized that if he actually touched cloth, the area under the cloth would be a part of the acrobat that would be completely socially unacceptable for him to have his hands on, especially with his sister standing there watching him do it. He settled for raising his hands and putting them onto the young woman's shoulders.

"So, how does this explain what happened to the air nomads?" Katara asked a little upset by the open display of affection by the Fire Nation girl.

At the sound of her voice the two erstwhile opponents broke apart, the young man blushing furiously, and trying to hide the fact. The faux "Zuko" just stood bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet smiling hugely. She had finally gotten her hug from "Dreamy". The tribesman his ears burning with embarrassment, quickly moved back to his work table and began to cut up the meat he had freed from the joint he had been working on.

"What I was trying to show was that the airbenders don't meet force head on, like Firebenders, or Earthbenders. They avoid the direct attack and then move to an undefended side and strike there. The same would be true of their military tactics."

"When we went to the Southern Air Temple we found skeletons of older monks and Fire Nation soldiers, but we did not find any evidence of a massacre of children. The Air Temples were centers of teaching the young, there should have been a lot more air nomad bodies and most of them should have been small, the bones of children."

"What I think happened during the attack, was that a group of the older monks volunteered to stay behind and defend the temple, as a rear guard and a distraction to the Fire Nation Army, while the majority of the residents escaped. The rear guard, probably led by Gyatso, must have put up one heck of a fight for the Fire Army to leave their dead behind the way they did."

"The Fire Benders probably went after the refugees, but remember this was before they had flying machines so they would have been limited in their pursuit. They probably caught some of them but probably not that many. So the survivors then had to go into hiding to avoid being wiped out. They wanted Sozin to believe that he had succeeded in his genocide so they disappeared into the other nations, hiding the fact that they were airbenders." Sokka finished with a last swing of his knife.

"But where are they now?" Katara asked.

"They are probably hiding in the Fire Nation, waiting for their chance to hit the enemy in his unprotected back, just as I did with Ty Lee."

"That's so clever of you." Ty Lee said as she joined the waterbender by the sink where they had been preparing vegetables.

"Do you really think that's what happened?" Katara asked him.

"Well it fits what little of what I know about their combat philosophy and it fits the little bit of evidence I have seen."

"But the war is over, why haven't they come out of hiding?" The Fire Nation girl asked.

"They don't believe that the war is over yet. They may be thinking that this is just a trick to lure them into a trap."

Sokka then turned to his sister and said,

"Look, Zuko was chasing us for a few months and when he said he had changed that for him 'the war was over' I didn't believe him. What if he had been chasing us for generations. What if he had killed all our friends and family, I might never have trusted him."

The tribesman turned back to his task but continued talking,

"What will be interesting will be when they do start to reveal themselves, it may take a few years, it may take an entire generation, but by now none of them have ever lived as Air Nomads. They have spent the last five generations as citizens of the Fire Nation or as subjects of the Earth Kingdom. They will need to re-learn their entire culture, if they even want to. It will be a very interesting time for the world."

Katara and Ty Lee returned to their tasks. Both of them deep in thought. Neither of them had ever thought of any of this, they each had a lot to mull over.

Ty Lee thought _He really is very clever to think of all that_. Then she thought _I wonder what a "wet" kiss is like_.

The last waterbender of the southern watertribe thought _how does he think of all these things_. She looked at the ulu in her hand. She had never thought of making her own, she had simply thought generally of getting another one when she went home. Her father or brother would have made one for her. She had only vague ideas of the future, of how it would all be better than it was now. Her brother analyzed and planned for the future.

Sokka was the one of all of them that had realized that if she stayed with the Avatar she could never really return home. She had not thought of that. He had learned a new skill just to give her something she needed and would never be able to obtain under her new circumstances. If she was going to join her life to Aang's and she knew that she already had done so, as a friend if not as something more, she would have to start thinking of the future in a new, more realistic, way. She also realized just how special her brother was, and how important he was to the new world that Aang was trying to create. Yes the Avatar, and probably the Fire Lord and the Earth King were going to need Sokka, almost as much as she needed him.

Katara finished putting the vegetables she had prepared in the bamboo steamers, no matter what the future held for any of them, she still had to get dinner ready.

To Be Continued

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Updated Notes: Once again a great big thank you to **Vox Populi** for proof reading this story for me. (Sorry I know it drives you crazy but I think ...bendry sounds more Sokka so I kept it in.:-)

Authors Notes;

I want to thank all of the people who have read, and everyone that has placed this story on their alerts and/or favorites and for the reviews. I really appreciate you taking an interest and I hope you are enjoying the story so far.

Yes I know I promised you Tokka and there has been little to none so far. Sorry this is all set up for the main part of the story which is the journey the two of them will take to Gaoling. There should be two more updates before the actual journey will begin. I hope the story so far is enough to keep your interest and you will keep reading until we get to the meat of the story.

I have kept the mature warning on this because as it progresses there will be violence and language, death and destruction.

All reviews are more than welcome. I would especially appreciate any comments and or criticism of the little combat scene in this part. Was it too technical with too much physical description? Not enough? Couldn't understand what was going on? Not enough going on? Any and all criticism would be welcome.

Thanks a lot

Hope you like it.


	5. Chapter 5

I'll Walk You Home pt 5

Chapter 2

Part 3

Tori and Uke

Suki was not happy, she was hurt, embarrassed, and angry.

Suki was kneeling beside her bed, which was really a heavy quilt on top of a straw mat that Sokka had made for her. She was not used to sleeping in a bed. Back home, civilized people slept on a heavy quilt called a futon that was pulled out of a closet and placed on the floor of the house. The floor was wood and actually covered with a thick straw mat, which made it quite comfortable. In the morning the futon would be put away, back into the closet, and the room cleared. In Kyoshi, space was at a premium. Not like it was here where you had a special room just for sleeping, and where people slept in beds high above the floor.

When they had first come here from the Fire Nation she had had to share a bed with Katara. With Mai visiting there had been four of them, Katara, Toph, Mai, and herself and with only two beds, they had had to share. Luckily, Toph preferred sleeping on the floor which left only Katara and Suki sharing a bed. Suki had not liked it. She did not like being so high off the floor, and she especially did not like sharing the bed with someone else, though Katara did not seem to have any problem with it. In the Southern Water Tribe friends and family usually slept in the same bed. Sokka had explained to her that his entire family only had one bed that everyone shared. Something about conserving body heat, he explained,

"Sleep alone, die alone." almost as if it were a mantra, and his sister had echoed him in the same tone.

Sokka had seen her discomfort and started his gentle questioning, he had found out what was wrong and then had gone out and made a mat, really just a mattress cover stuffed with straw, and had found her a quilt she could use as a futon, and he had created a Kyoshi bed for her. She had to admit it was a good approximation and she had slept much better since she had started using it. When Ty Lee arrived, the acrobat shared Katara's bed, Mai had never had to share and was as uncomfortable with it as Suki was. Since Mai had returned with Zuko to the Fire Nation they now each had their own bed.

Suki knelt and stewed. She finally decided that even if she did not know why she was unhappy it must be all Sokka's fault. She was not sure about a lot of things, but she was sure of that the water tribesman was to blame. After all it had started when that stupid, provincial, arrogant, incompetent, clumsy, and handsome boy had walked into her dojo back on Kyoshi Island.

The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors was used to the type. There were plenty of them on the island, and she was used to dealing with them. It only took a moment to humiliate him in front of the other girls, that was all it usually took to rid her of his type. If they lost enough "face" they would go away and never come back. But then Sokka had done something no other boy had ever done. The Water Tribe warrior had returned, not just returned, but he then humbled himself to her. Kneeling and bowing to her, begging her to instruct him, to become his teacher.

She had relented seeing a chance to humiliate him even more. She had made him dress as a woman, and to her surprise he had met the challenge. Every road block she put before him he accepted with humility. Once again he gained face, while she now was the one loosing it. The worst had come when he had actually learned a technique and instead of praising him, she had used a wrist lock to hurt him. That was a dishonorable act on her part, one not worthy of a true sensei.

Yes that was the start of her troubles, she just didn't realize it at the time. Suki had followed him to the war. She told herself, her family, and the other warriors that it was time for Kyoshi to make a difference in the war, but really it was to find him again. _Make a difference_ she told herself. That was a laugh. At first her warriors were treated like little girls,

"Don't bother anyone, run along and play soldier." The commander of the first Earth Kingdom garrison that they came to had told her.

Eventually, she and her elite team were given the meaningless duty of guarding the ferry landing. (Sokka had eventually explained to her that the Fire Army would never attack the ferry to Ba Sing Se, they wanted as many of the refugees as possible to get inside the city to drain its' resources). Suki's only accomplishment was to rescue the little earthbender, someone really important to the war effort. Come to think of it, Appa, a great dumb beast was more important to the war then she and her warriors were.

Defeat, capture, rescue followed, she had lost honor and gained none. In the final battle she was just an extra piece of equipment that was along for the ride. Sokka and Toph were the ones that had taken on the most powerful military force in the world and won. She could not even insult the defeated Fire Lord properly.

After the war it had gotten worse not better. For the weeks that they were in the Fire Nation, Zuko had asked Sokka to attend meetings that the new Fire Lord was unable to attend, to be Zuko's "Eyes and Ears".

Suki had attended the first meeting. She was dressed in her full Kyoshi uniform and armor, complete with war paint. Sokka had chosen to wear a slightly more formal version of his Water Tribe clothes, and carried no weapons on that day. The meeting was held in a large room, the walls covered with maps of the other nations, and there was a long table with chairs running down the center of the room. The meeting was with a group of Fire Army Commanders and their staff officers and was to decide how best to remove the Fire Army of Occupation from Ba Sing Se.

The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors and the Water Tribe Warrior, were once again treated as little children. Suki had made a suggestion and it was met with laughter.

"And what will the army live on?" she was asked by one of the staff officers.

Suki still remembered the embarrassment of that moment, her face red, her ears burning. She wanted to challenge the man to a duel right then and there, but Sokka had stopped her with a quiet touch on her arm.

"Please forgive us for our youth and simplicity Colonel Ho." Sokka had said.

"As I said at the outset we are only here as the eyes and ears of the Fire Lord. In my case for obvious reasons." With this last he indicated his own large ears, which got another laugh from the assembled leaders of the Fire Army.

"As his eyes and ears we have no authority, we are not his voice. We are here simply to observe and report back to him, but I hope you will allow me to ask a few questions that I know the Fire Lord will ask me and I would be very remiss if I did not have the answers for him."

There followed a series of questions that showed that the young man had understood exactly what the commanders were trying to do, but they also showed that Sokka had truly understood the problem that faced them, and by his questions he moved them to a new solution to the real problem. From being an observer he became the leader of the meeting.

"How many transport ships are there?"

"I understand that a transport can carry three hundred troops but how many troops can it supply?"

"How many days march from the depot would that be?"

"Where would the fresh water supply be for that line of march?"

"Wouldn't it be better if they moved through the southern pass?"

"What is the condition of that road? Can it handle that much traffic?"

"Won't the refugees returning to the occupied territories cause disruptions in communications with the coast?"

On and on the questions came, showing a better understanding of the situation on the ground and in the army then the generals and their staffs had. At one point Sokka stood in front of a large wall map of the Earth Kingdom, land that he had either walked or flown over for the last six months, lecturing them on the real conditions on the ground. By the end of the meeting an entirely new plan with a new time table had been decided on, Sokka's plan, and orders were being written to put it into effect.

As the meeting broke up the most senior of the leaders, Field Marshall Lau approached the young water tribesman and bowed to him.

"So this is the famous 'Sword of the Avatar'".

"You do me too much honor Field Marshall. Avatar Aang has never needed a sword, let alone one as ill used as my poor skills will allow." Sokka said while returning the bow, making sure to bow lower than the army commander had.

"The Fire lord has chosen well for his eyes and ears, for what good are eyes and ears without a sharp mind behind them?" Lau said while beginning another bow.

"I am but the senses, the voice and brain are the Fire Lords." Sokka said, returning the bow.

Suki noted that the young man was quicker, beating the older warrior to the lower position, thus gaining face while preventing the older man from gaining any. Sokka had learned to play the game well. She knew that the Southern Water Tribe did not bow to one another.

"May I introduce you to Commander Suki of the Kyoshi Warriors." The Young warrior said as he indicated the young woman beside him.

"Ahh yes, we have heard of you as well. You had the misfortune of meeting the Fire Princess in battle." The old general said with a smile.

Suki's left hand went to the hilt of the long sword in her sash, her thumb pushing against the tsuba freeing the sword in its scabbard, readying it for a lightning quick draw, but before her right hand could move to take the grip, Sokka's voice stopped her.

"No doubt, Field Marshall, you meant misfortune for the Fire Princess and the Fire Nation. For it was in that battle that the Kyoshi warriors freed the Avatar's Sky Bison, which allowed Avatar Aang to escape from the fall of Ba Sing Se, to infiltrate the Fire Nation itself, and to escape from the failed invasion of the Fire Nation Capital. It was Commander Suki's sacrifice that allowed the Avatar and the new Fire Lord to end the war. As a great commander you of course understand that the warrior who loses the fight but wins the war gains the greatest honor of all."

"That is exactly what I meant." The old general replied.

"Please excuse me, 'Sword of the Avatar'." Lau added. "There are more meetings, no doubt for both of us. I will look forward to our next meeting."

"As will I." the younger man replied, bowing.

Field Marshall Lau hesitated for just a moment, and then bowed, making sure that he bowed the precise distance that the Water Tribe warrior had, thus giving honor to the younger man while gaining honor for himself in acknowledging an equal.

After that first meeting, and although invited by Sokka, Suki did not attend any more meetings, though Zuko increased the number of meetings he asked Sokka to "observe" for him. Being humiliated once was quite enough for her. She was not going to be some exotic attachment to the young man's arm.

* * *

There had been one more incident while they were in the Fire Nation that Suki could not forget. She was meeting Sokka for lunch after one of the meetings. The meeting was running long, of course, and instead of waiting with the other lesser aids and staff officers, in the hallway in front of the meeting room, she had decided to walk through the halls of the Fire Lords palace. The building was huge, larger than her entire village back home.

On her return to the hallway in front of the conference room, she heard from around a corner two men talking quietly to each other. She stopped, out of sight, and listened in on the private conversation,

"Is the circus in town?" asked the first,

"Oh, you mean the 'clown' that was here earlier? She's a bit of baggage the 'Sword' keeps handy."

"So, she is the one who put her foot in her mouth at the first planning meeting?"

"Yes, that's her. Though, I think the 'Sword' prefers to put something other than a foot in her mouth."

They both laughed at that.

"Of all the girls he had to choose from, why did he pick her?" The second to speak asked. "As far as I can tell she's rather plain under all that make up. The acrobat is prettier, the consort has a better mind, and the water bender, well, she is a water bender after all." He ended with a nasty snicker.

"You forget we are talking about the 'Sword' here. He examines everything from every angle and always chooses the best. Now the acrobat, you do know that she was considered a secret weapon in the war, in case of attack you just puncture her eardrums and the resulting vacuum would destroy the enemy. The consort has the best mind, but she is Zuzu's after all, and you don't want too much intellect in bed. And as for the waterbender, well she is his sister after all."

"As if that would make a difference to a 'wet'"

"True…" Replied his companion, "But I noticed you didn't mention the earthbender."

"The 'Cave Troll', she's rather young don't you think?"

"We are talking Water Tribe here, do you really think it would make a difference to him?" Asked the first.

"Well, now that you mention it, probably not. But still, can you imagine waking up to that in the morning?" the second finished with a shudder.

"If you cleaned her up and dressed her properly I think Zuzu's little pet earthbender could be quite pretty. But once again this is the 'Sword' we are talking about. His choice is perfect. Not too pretty, not too plain, not too smart, not too stupid, just like the story of Amber Eyes and the Platypus Bears, his choice is just right."

Suki's sword was half way out of its' scabbard, the only thing stopping her was wondering if she should challenge them first or just cut them down where they stood.

"Have you ever been in a meeting with Zuzu and his mud?"The second to speak asked, then went on, "It is terrifying I can tell you. She just sits there complaining about how boring the whole thing is, or worse yet, pretending to be asleep, and before you can even finish your presentation she says 'He's lying'."

"Don't talk to me until you have lived through a meeting with 'The Fire Lords Blue Eye's'." replied the first. "Those terrible blue eyes look down into your very soul, and before you have even said a word he knows you inner most thoughts. It is terrifying."

Suki had finally decided to just cut them down where they stood, her sword was out and she was about to step around the corner into the hall when the doors to the meeting room opened and the occupants flooded out. She had to hold herself in check, she couldn't just start slaughtering everyone in the hall. The Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors sheathed her sword and stepped into view. There in front of the doors stood Sokka talking to Field Marshall Lau.

As she approached she saw the recognition and love in the tribesman's "terrible" blue eyes. Sokka detached himself from the general and moved, arms wide for a hug. She hung back and did not close the distance between them, and when the young man leaned in for a kiss, she turned her head to the side, receiving the kiss on her cheek, not on her lips. He could see that something had upset her and she saw the concern on his face, but she decided she would not say anything. This was nothing he needed to know about.

After that incident, Suki did not go to the palace unless she was required to for formal celebrations.

The swordswoman was very happy when they finally left for Ba Sing Se, she was sure most of the Fire Army was just as happy if not even happier that the Fire Lord's "Eyes and Ears" were leaving.

Suki had hoped that Ba Sing Se would be better than the Fire Nation, but it wasn't. More meetings for Sokka, for everyone except her really, she was still just a bit of Sokka's baggage.

She had changed that at least. She had ended the physical part of their relationship. The night of the overheard conversation she had turned Sokka away from her bed.

They had started to be with one another on the night of the "Mellon Lord" training session. They both realized that the next fight would be the last, and that not all of them, maybe that none of them would return from it. With no words passing between them they had both decided that they would not deny their need for one another. Then when they both had survived they had celebrated their new chance at a life together, and had been ever since.

But after overhearing what those officers said she had decided that she was more than just a collection of holes for the "Sword" to use for his pleasure. The young tribesman had never acted that way towards her. He was always loving and respectful, but the words had hurt too much to be ignored.

She could see that he was hurt by her rejection, it was plain on his face, and it had felt good to know that he was suffering as she had been for weeks. It was then that she decided that she needed to hurt him, if not emotionally then physically.

Suki's physical skill was the last thing she had, were she was superior to Sokka. She had spent years, learning, and practicing each move, each weapon. But now in a short month of training the young warrior was rapidly gaining skills that had taken her years. He was an equal to her when he used his long Jian sword against her katana, he was nearly as good with the katana as she was. The leader of the Kyoshi Warriors could not equal the tribesman with thrown weapons, or with spear, his natural ability and a life of hunting insured that. It was only with unarmed combat that she had a clear advantage. But he was quickly changing that.

Sokka was training with anyone who would teach him, not just Ty Lee and Mai, but with benders as well. This was an insult to his teacher, in essence he was saying that Suki could not teach him all that he needed to know. He would take bending techniques and combine them to make entirely new moves. From Aang and Katara he learned grace and speed, it was almost impossible to hit him now unless he was allowing you to do so. From Toph and Zuko he learned power, he had a shoulder lunge that could break ribs.

Suki began to message her forehead and temples. She had another headache starting.

In three days they would leave for Kyoshi, for home, and it would all be better there. There she was the leader, the Commander of the Kyoshi Warriors, she would be his commander, after all, he was a Kyoshi Warrior. There the meetings would be for her not for him. There he would be the exotic attachement to her arm. There life would return to normal.

Until then she knelt massaging her head and waited for someone to tell her it was time to eat.

Ty Lee set the places at the dinner table,

"Use your hands and not your feet, and don't spin the bowls on the ends of the chop sticks!"

Katara had told her. _I only did it that one time_ Ty Lee told herself, _there is no reason for Katara to get so upset_. The acrobat used to look forward to dinner with everyone, back when Zuko and Mai had been here.

Dinners used to be fun, Katara would ask about everyone's day, Aang would tell stories, Sokka would tell jokes and Toph would make fun of and hit Sokka. At first she was disapproving of the way the little earthbender treated "Cutie" but he didn't seem to mind. Even Zuko and Mai were different here. Zuko was much more talkative, usually telling stories about his adventures with his uncle. Mai still made her little comments, which no one except Sokka seemed to get. He would roar out his barking laugh whenever she said one. Often Mai would catch the tribesman when he had a mouthful of food which would then end up sprayed all over someone. Ty thought Mai waited and did it on purpose.

But then Zuko and Mai had returned home and soon the tension between Sokka and Suki started to grow and dinners got very quiet. She did not know what the problem between the two of them was but it was affecting everyone at this point.

Once the places were set Katara and Sokka began to bring out the dishes of food and Katara called everyone in to dinner. Katara always sat at one end of the table and Sokka sat at the other. Aang always sat on Katara's right, Suki on Sokka's right and Toph on his left. Ty Lee at first had tried to sit next to "Dreamy" _Yes definitely 'Dreamy' now, Aang can be 'Cutie'_, but she was quickly relegated to Katara's left by the two other girls.

The meal was very quiet this evening. The waterbender tried to start up some conversation by asking people about their day, and about their training but no one gave much more than a one or two word reply.

Finally Ty Lee thought of something that would be fun.

"'Dreamy' you should tell 'Cutie' about what you think happened to the Airbenders."

"Yes Sokka tell Aang about what you figured out." Katara encouraged.

"Better than that, we can show him!" Ty Lee said jumping up out of her chair. She ran to the open area of the room and beckoned Sokka to join her, she then assumed her firebender stance, with a fierce determined look on her face.

The young man stood, looking embarrassed, and as he walked to join Ty Lee he explained,

"Now this is only a theory remember, but it fits most of the facts as I know them."

He joined the pretty young acrobat, and tried to take his position, but he was very self-conscious. This wasn't like before where he was just explaining something to his sister in the kitchen. He was now giving a presentation in front of everyone. It didn't occur to the terrified young man that "everyone" was only four close friends, to him they were an "Audience".

This was like the time he had had to explain the invasion on the "Day of Black Sun", and he felt the cold sweat break out on his forehead, just like that time. If only this was one of those meetings he had been attending. Those had been easy, almost fun. There all he had to do was figure out what everyone else was talking about, and what they really wanted to do. It was like a puzzle he had to solve. All he had to do there was ask questions. Here he was the center of attention and it totally unnerved the young warrior.

He explained, tripping and tumbling over his words, what he was trying to demonstrate, this time leaving out the jokes about Zuko and Aang, then he took his Airbending stance. He looked at Ty Lee who had a concerned look on her face, which freaked him out even more.

The young acrobat had seen the fright in his eyes and was worried for him. To her this was fun, she loved performing. She once again took her fierce stance and nodded to let her partner know that she was starting the performance. She advanced and threw the reverse punch as she had in the kitchen.

Sokka panicked, he wasn't sure what he should do, but then remembered he had to avoid the punch, luckily Ty Lee had slowed down her attack and he just had time to take his sliding hop step. Unfortunately, instead of moving to her right, as he was supposed to, he moved to his right which sent him directly into Ty Lee's advance, tripping over his own feet as he did so. This sent him right into the young woman and he was only able to stop himself before the two of them bumped heads. The two stood there for a moment knowing that something was wrong.

Sokka knew that his right hand, which had been the lower hand in his stance was touching something warm and smooth, _skin, yes definitely skin_ he told himself. He wasn't sure what his left, the upper hand, was touching, _cloth, yes cloth, but something soft yet firm underneath the cloth_ .

The young man was nose to nose with the pretty, young woman. He looked into her eyes and saw that concern had been pre-empted by surprise. He was still not sure what had happened or what he was touching yet. He gently squeezed whatever was under his left hand trying to determine what it was. It was familiar yet different. Ty Lee's expression changed from surprised to very surprised then something else was added in, down at the bottom of those very wide grey blue eyes. Sokka decided he would not try the same experiment with his right hand, instead he took a quick look down to see just where his left hand was. The information from his eyes caused his higher brain functions to crash and burn in a brilliant white light and Sokka's brain retreated into a dark alcove of his skull where it gibbered quietly to itself.

Luckily, Sokka's autonomic nervous system kicked in and both of his hands suddenly retreated, of their own will, from their contact points with the acrobat.

Toph, whose feet had been firmly planted on the floor during the entire demonstration turned to the Avatar and asked.

"So… that's a classic Airbending move ehh, Aang? Have you tried it on Katara yet?"

All she heard in reply was an embarrassed giggle from the airbender, the sound of Katara's forehead hitting the table, and from behind her, the sound of Suki's chop sticks breaking.

Sokka felt the heat coming off of his face and ears in waves. He knew that he had become a new beacon for embarrassment in the world. He could see by the bright red color of her ears that Ty Lee was in a similar predicament, though she had had the sense to turn away from the group.

After a very painful pause the acrobat cleared her throat and suggested,

"Why don't we try that again?"

"Do you really think that is necessary? It looks like you got it right the first time." Toph jeered.

Aang upped his nervous giggle to a laugh, Katara continued to bang her head on the table, and Toph could have sworn that she heard Suki actually growl.

The young warrior and the pretty acrobat took their positions again. Sokka felt an urge to try and brush Ty Lee off, as if his contact with her and gotten her dusty in some way but his brain, which was still hiding in a dark recess of his skull gibbered wildly at the suggestion and Sokka was able to stop himself in time.

Ty Lee threw the punch again and Sokka took his hop step again this time following the young woman's eyes which were signaling him to move to her right. He somehow was able to keep moving (probably all the training he had been doing took over) and found himself behind her. Just as in the kitchen she turned to the right and then to the left, the "airbender" compensating each time just as before.

The circus performer decided that now would be a good time to improvise and asked,

"Now where did that pesky airbender go? I can't find him anywhere."

She even placed a finger on her chin to indicate that she was thinking. She heard a slap behind her as Sokka's hand left a red impression on his forehead.

"Tickle me!" Ty Lee whispered to her partner.

"What?"

"Tickle me like before!" she told him. Sokka complied, though he was hesitant to make any physical contact with girl at this point.

Ty Lee jumped away squealing loudly, then she hopped up into the air and came down striking a pose for the crowd. Then she hopped up again and struck a second pose this time pointing to her partner. When she landed she cried out,

"Hoop La!"

Sokka didn't understand what this last was about but after a moment's hesitation he hopped awkwardly and pointing to the young woman said in a quiet voice,

"Hoop la."

Aang, not knowing what else to do started to applaud the performance. Toph joined in, though she added some loud cheering and whistling as well.

Sokka rushed to re-acquire his chair but tripped and fell flat on his face in front of Toph. Luckily, his training on break falls kicked in and he was unhurt. He looked up into earthbender's smiling face. He could have sworn the floor had shifted under him as he was running just then.

By the time he had picked himself up and gotten back to his chair Ty Lee was already seated, though still a little flushed from the performance. At least Sokka hoped it was from the performance.

"Sokka tell him the rest" Katara urged.

The warrior began to explain his theory to the Avatar. He was careful when discussing the bodies that were found at the Southern Air Temple. He still remembered Aang going into the Avatar State when he had found Gyatso's skeleton. Katara had saved all three of them that time, yes for all her nagging and mothering of him Sokka had always admired his sisters shear courage.

As Aang heard and understood more and more of Sokka's theory he became more and more excited. Finally, when the swordsman had finished Aang jumped up and said,

"We have to pack and get ready! The four of us need to leave for the Fire Nation first thing tomorrow! This will be so great! We have to find them!"

_The four of them? Great! I'm not even Sokka's inconvenient piece of baggage now, I'm just something that needs to be left behind and maybe picked up later_ Suki thought.

Ty Lee just looked excited, thinking she would get a chance to ride on the Avatar's flying bison. It had not registered to her that she had not been included.

Sokka was going to explain that this would be a bad idea when he was cut off by Toph saying,

"I can't go."

"What? Why not?" Aang wanted to know.

"I've decided that I have to go home and see my parents."

"Good for you Toph." Katara praised her, "It will be really good for you and your parents to come to a reconciliation."

"That would be perfect!" Aang enthused. "We can fly down to Gaoling and then from there on to the Fire Nation, or we could drop you off on our way back."

"Sorry 'Twinkle Toes'." Toph replied, "I am not going to be flying anywhere any more. I only flew before because of the war. I hate flying. Now that I don't have too I am never going to lose contact with the earth again. I am not riding anything, or in anything ever again unless I have to, and I am totally never getting on a ship ever again even if it kills me!"

The little earthbenders voice and manner became more and more heated as she went on until she finished with,

"I'm walking home!" The way she said it left no room for argument.

"Gaoling is half way across the entire Earth Kingdom!" Sokka protested, "You can't walk the whole way!"

"Yes I can and yes I will!" was her reply.

The table was quiet for a minute then Sokka told her,

"Fine, but you are not going alone. I'll walk you home."

"I don't need you or anyone else's help!" Toph told him, heat coloring her words.

"Nobody said anything about need, I just said I'm going with you, that's all."

"I don't need your protection, Meathead!"

"Toph you're the most powerful bender who has ever lived, I am the least powerful person you know, who do you think is going to be protecting who on this trip? You've saved my life more times than I can count what's a few more to add to the list. But you are not going all that way alone."

Sokka turned to his friend and told her flat out,

"Look, I know you don't like me much, but you're stuck with me. Everyone else has stuff to do, not only am I the least powerful but I am also the least important person you know. I am going with you, now you can either walk with me, or I can follow you. I would prefer it if we could walk together then I will have someone to talk to, and it will be easier for you to protect me, but no matter what, I am going to be there."

"What about me?" Suki's quiet question broke into the argument. "You were coming home with me."

"Suki," the young man turned to her and explained, "You're going by ship and Ty Lee will be with you. Toph will be all alone, I can't just abandon her."

"Me you can abandon, but not your little…" Suki couldn't think of a name then she remembered the words of the Fire Nation Staff officer and finished with,

" 'Cave Troll'!"

The Captain of the Kyoshi Warriors stood up then, knocking her chair over in the process and stormed out of the room. They heard her slam the bedroom door behind her.

Toph sat with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. This was just what she was trying to avoid, the whole point of this trip was to get away from "Meathead" and get over this stupid crush she had.

"Meathead!" she told him "You just have to screw everything up, don't you." Then she stood up and walked out into the garden.

Sokka stood up and told her retreating back,

"I'm walking you home and there is nothing you can do to stop me!"

The tribesman yelped suddenly as he was swallowed up to his neck in the floor. His sister, the avatar and the acrobat saw him disappear below the table, then they heard him say.

"I obviously just have a way with women."

A moment later they heard,

"Aang a little help here please."

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

New Note: I have made minor changes thanks to the great job of proof reading by **Vox Populi**. (You will just have to use your imagination, I am not going to tell you where Sokka's left hand was. Also I left Army of Occupation in caps since I want to use it as a name. Thanks very much for all the great help.)

Author Notes: I want to thank everyone for reading and especially all those who have added this story to their alerts. A very special thank you to those who have left reviews, I hope this story continues to meet your expectations.

My Wife left a review of the last chapter, but unfortunately I was logged in at the time so it looks like I reviewed my own story, which is not the case, I do want to thank her for the review though.

The next chapter will start the journey to Gaoling for Sokka and Toph, which will be the main part of this story.

I hope this chapter is not too long.

Thanks again.

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.

JTGYK

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.

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Next: soon to come:


	6. Chapter 6

I'll Walk You Home pt 6

Chapter 3

To the Library!

Toph woke up hard the next morning. She had not slept well, worrying about …, well everything. Suki obviously was having problems as well since the warrior was tossing and turning and up and down all night as well. At one point, after Toph was finally able to fall asleep, she woke up suddenly from a weird dream she was having. The blind girl was disorientated for a moment, not sure if she was awake or still dreaming before she realized that someone was standing at the foot of her "bed" staring down at the earthbender as she lay on the floor.

At first she wasn't sure who the strange person was, but after her earthbending finally kicked in she recognized the silhouette of Suki in her sleeping kimono. Suki was not moving, just staring at her, as the seconds dragged on Toph thought about moving or saying something. The situation was starting to creep the young girl out, but then Suki turned and returned to her "Kyoshi" bed at the other end of the room and lay down again.

Toph finally got back to sleep, but all too soon the others starting to get up. She could feel first Suki, then Katara, and finally Ty Lee get up and begin to bustle around the room. She could even feel Aang and Sokka _Sokka? _up and moving in the other bedroom. Finally she decided she should get up too, though it felt like she was moving through thick mud the whole time.

As the earthbender raised her arms to stretch the kinks out of her muscles she got a whiff of her own arm pit. _Euuehh _she thought,_ yeah maybe I should wash up a little today_.

Toph searched for the robe Katara had gotten her when they first moved into the house, so she could go to the bath room in something other than her underwear. Her "bed" which was just a blanket on the floor was next to Katara's bed and Toph had shoved most of her possessions under her friend's bed to keep them out of the way. With the two extra "beds" in the room floor space was running scarce. She searched around through the clutter and found the robe, threw it on, and headed out into the hall and down to the wash room.

The Master Earthbender tapped her toes on the floor to determine where everyone was, to make sure the bath room was not being used by someone else. If she could not locate someone that would mean they were probably in the large wooden bath tub that Sokka had put in the room. She found everyone in the house, Katara in the kitchen, Ty Lee in the girls' room, Suki in the back yard, and Aang and Sokka in the boys' room. Good, she thought, she would have the washroom all to herself. She opened the door, went in, closed it after her, and she then threw the dead bolt to insure privacy. The other girls didn't seem to mind dressing and undressing and even bathing in front of each other, but Toph did not like it at all.

Toph took off the robe, hung it up on the peg on the back of the door then pulled off her tunic and her shorts, which left her in her breast wrap and under shorts. She thought for a moment, then with a sigh pulled them off as well, _might was well wash all of me _she decided. She did not like getting naked. She had a good idea of what the other three girls in the house looked like. Her earthbending sight gave her an excellent silhouette picture of them all. _Especially Ty Lee _whose clothes, what there was of them, did not register very well in earthbending sight. All of them were curvy and well…, "booby", the young girl was not curvy, she did not have "boobs" she had "bumps".

Toph was embarrassed by her lack of girly attributes, though she had never said anything about it to anyone. Her mother had told her that in a year or two she would blossom into a young woman. The "Blind Bandit" had no desire to blossom into anything. She wished she could have just stayed as she was and not have to deal with all this "blossoming" nonsense. Even though she could not see she could feel the way boys and men looked at the other girls, especially Katara and Ty Lee, and the way those same men and boys looked at her. She was the ugly one, the non-curvy one, the "bumpy" one.

The earthbender grabbed a bar of soap and stepped into the "rain bath" that Sokka had made, well not made really, she was the one who had made all the parts with her metal bending. She had earthbended the room as well. It was all part of his Kyoshi bathroom, as he called it. Apparently in Kyoshi people did not wash in the bathtub. They washed outside the tub, poured a bucket of water over their heads, then, when they were all nice and clean, they would sit in the tub and par boil themselves for an hour or so. This made absolutely no sense to her. Why would you wash yourself and then get into even more water. Toph did not like being in water, she couldn't "see" in water, especially if the water was in a wooden tub.

Making the rain bath had actually been fun for the metal bender. "Meathead" had come up to her one afternoon all excited holding something in front of him.

"Toph I have a project for us" he had told her.

She heard a rustling sound as he held the object she could not feel out in front of her.

"What's that?" she asked him.

"A detailed plan of my new invention, I am calling it a 'Rain Bath' since it's like washing in a rain shower."

"What part of blind don't you understand?" she asked conversationally.

"Yeah…." He moaned. "Hey, I'm brilliant not smart"

After that he began to explain what he wanted and they had worked on it for two days. It was a lot like old times, the two of them working closely with each other, cracking jokes and accomplishing a difficult task. She had even forgotten that they were making it for "Fangirl". Once they were finished Suki, of course, refused to use it, she would rather stick to tradition and pour a bucket of cold water over her head. Everyone else in the house loved it. Especially Ty Lee, who would spend half an hour under the warm "rain", and use up all the hot water. Aang would heat the big water tank every morning and every evening, so people could have hot water for bathing.

The "Rain Bath" room was small and had a wooden grate on the floor so the water could drain out, which meant that Toph could not use her feet to "see" when she was in it, but the walls were stone and Sokka had, well she had really, but it was his idea, installed a copper railing around the walls at a convenient height. Touching either the wall or the rail with her hands restored her ability to feel the room. She found the handles that controlled the water and adjusted them until it was a good temperature for her and stepped under the "Rain".

Even though the metalbender disliked water in general and getting wet in particular she had to admit this was a lot better than pouring a bucket of cold water over her head.

The young girl stood in the cascade of warm water for a moment letting in run over her head and down her body, then she reached out for the wall, found the handle and increased the flow from the warm water tank until the "rain" was almost hot. She felt the muscles on her neck and shoulders begin to relax. The earthbender had not realized how tense she was until then.

Toph soaped her hands and washed her face and neck, working the kinks out. She knew why she was tense. It was all the water tribe boys fault. It always was. _Why? _she asked herself. Why was Sokka different then every other boy she knew. She spent as much time with Aang as she had with the warrior, she had held the Avatar's hand, had held Zuko's hand, but her heart did not skip a beat when she did, but when Sokka took her hand her heart would jump and her stomach would flip up and down, and she couldn't breathe for a second, the blood would rush to her face. It was just awful.

The girl began to soap the rest of her body, right hand holding the soap, and left hand doing the washing. She ran the soap over her "bumps" then down her stomach to her thighs.

Ty Lee had called Sokka a "Wet" but he wasn't wet, he was warm and dry, his hands hard like Toph's own. Their two hands fit together perfectly, they moved perfectly together, whether they were just walking to go shopping, or running for their lives in battle. She remembered the warriors warm arms around her during the last battle, his strong body over hers as they lay on the airship, holding her, protecting her. Hearing his breath in her ear, their heads together, as they lay there, Sokka on top of her, risking his life to save her. His lips close to her face. She thought about how his lips would feel, they would be warm, and gentle, like his touch.

The soap slipped from her fingers as she continued to wash herself. She did not notice the sound of the bar as it landed on the wooden grate at her feet. Standing on the wood she could not feel the world around her. She was standing, floating in a warm world of water running down her body.

Toph thought about the young man's lips and how Ty Lee had spoken of "wet" kisses. The earthbender felt the warmth of the water and felt a corresponding warmth begin to grow inside her, rising up into her stomach and chest. She was floating, warmth, heat now, growing all through her, rising up into her core.

"Sokka…" she breathed quietly.

The sound of her own voice shocked her. Her eyes flew open, she had not realized she had closed them, and her head came up. Her hands flew out to the walls of the "rain bath", seizing on the rail for stability. Her knees felt like jelly and her legs were weak.

Toph quickly stepped out onto the floor of the wash room. When her feet hit the stone floor she regained her "sight". She was standing dripping wet but now she knew where she was, she had returned to the world.

_What just happened? _she asked herself. _That was really weird_.

The young girl reached in and turned off the water, then grabbed a towel and began to dry herself off. She had never felt anything like that before and it unnerved her. Maybe she was getting sick, she really needed to get more sleep, she really needed to wash more often, and she really needed to pee all of a sudden.

After finishing in the wash room, Toph waited until she was sure the hall and the girls' room was empty before opening the door. She had not wanted to put her dirty clothes back on after cleaning herself and she did not want anyone to see her in just her robe. She dashed down the hall with her laundry under her arm and her hands holding the top and bottom of her robe closed. Just before she got to the bedroom door she heard Sokka's voice from the living room shout.

"To the Library!"

The she heard the front door close.

The young metal bender ducked into the girls' room and breathed a sigh of relief. She quickly found some fresh clothes and changed into them before anyone came in. She was just finishing by putting her hair up and adjusting her hair band when Ty Lee came in.

"Hey!" the acrobat called as she flopped down onto her bed.

"Hey" Toph replied.

"Well 'Dreamy' is off to the library at the university, 'Cutie' and 'Tara' are off to a council meeting, and 'The Kyoshi Queen' is off to the training ground, so it looks like it's just us for the day."

Toph just grunted in reply.

"I know, we can have a girls' day!" Ty Lee enthused as she hopped out of the bed and skipped over to the earthbender.

The younger girl, after her last experience with a "Girls' day out" had absolutely no desire for another one said.

"No thanks I good right here."

"Well… ohhh…, I know, let me fix your hair then?"

"My hair is fine."

"Sure it is, but a little change would be good, besides you have such nice hair you should show it off more."

"No really, I'd…"

"Oh come on, it will be fun! Where's your brush?"

"I don't have one." _That should end that _Toph thought

"Oh I have plenty, let me get one." And off the pink clad warrior flew, literally, over Katara's bed and landed on her own. Before Toph could run the acrobat was back and pushing the metalbender into a chair.

"You should brush your hair one hundred strokes every night." Ty Lee told her. "It keeps your hair clean and shiny."

There followed two hours of hair preparation and attempts at various "looks" for Toph. The younger girl tried to escape any number of times but the older girl was surprisingly strong and insistent.

* * *

Toph was sitting in the living room with her feet up on the table. She heard the door open and turned to hear who had come in. Until then Ty Lee and herself were still the only ones in the house.

"Hey Toph" She heard Sokka say from the door.

Then it was quiet for awhile, she did not hear the door close. The young girl did not know what was going on, but finally she heard the door close and the tribesman walk over to the table.

Sokka stood by the table for a moment before he said.

"Hair! You changed your hair."

The metalbender heard a disorganized sound of objects dropping onto the table then she heard Sokka begin to walk around the table in her direction. She self-consciously grabbed onto the long sheave of hair that was running down her back and pulled it over her shoulder, holding onto it with both hands.

Ty Lee had tried a number of different "looks" for Toph, single braid, double braid, a dozen braids, before settling on simply leaving the younger girl her signature long bangs and two small side falls that framed her face, then she gathered the rest of Toph's hair into a loose sheave at the back of her lower neck and tying it with a dark green, almost black, long thin ribbon. The younger girl had been trying to get used to her new hair all the rest of the day. She felt like someone was behind her all the time as it would move with her head, and it kept getting caught between her back and the back of any chair she sat in. She had thought more than once to just cut the offending thing off and be done with it.

Sokka continued his walk around the table and around Toph. She pulled her feet from the table and let the chair drop down on all four legs, putting her feet on the floor she stood and turned towards the young man as he paced.

"What?" she asked defensively, pulling on the long sheave of hair.

"Nothing," was his reply, "I just forget how long and pretty your hair is. That looks nice is all."

The young earthbender turned away desperately trying to hide the blush that quickly jumped up into her face. All thoughts of cutting her hair fled from her mind, as her right arm shot out and her fist connected with the warrior's upper arm.

"Well don't get used to it." She told him.

"No problem" Sokka answered, absent mindedly rubbing his arm. Then being distracted by Toph's hair, he ran into the chair on the other side of the table.

He didn't even bother saying "Ow", but looking down onto the table, he suddenly remembered his original intent and said.

"Toph, you have to see this, this is great!"

"I'd love to see anything" was her ironic reply. _Especially you _she added to herself.

"Oh, right… Well it's a map case." He twirled a leather tube up in the air.

"Did you know they have a store at the university?" He asked her then, "You can go to the library and shop, all in the same place, isn't that perfect. Maybe after everything is over I can live at the University and just read and shop all day and every day."

"Sounds great!" was her sarcastic reply.

This broke him out of his reverie and he got back to his original point.

"Anyway, in the library I found this great old map."

He explained as he opened the tube and pulled out a large scroll of paper that he spread on the table, using the map case and his shoulder bag to hold down the ends.

"I think it is even older than the one of the Fire Nation I found in Wan Shi Tong's library. Apparently there was an ancient empire and I mean really ancient, before bending, and before the Avatar, that used to rule most of the world. They had a small army that had to march everywhere, so they built this huge road system all over the Earthkingdom, many of them are still in use today but not all of them since cities have fallen and …"

"Blah, blah, is there a point here somewhere?" Toph cut him off.

"I was getting there" he answered defensively. "So this road system is still there and we will be able to use it for the trip. We can avoid the most heavily traveled sections and use the forgotten ones to go to Gaoling."

"Why can't I" The earthbender emphasized the "I" strongly, "just use the main roads?"

"WE can't use the main roads because with the Fire Army withdrawing to the coast and the Earth Army moving in, and all the refugees moving back into the once occupied territories it is going to be absolute chaos on the main roads. By using these side roads WE can avoid all that and still make good time."

"Sokka I don't NEED you to come with me."

"Fine, you don't need anything, but what about me Toph? I NEED to go with you. Come on, it will be like old times, you and me against the world."

"This will all end in tears." She said as she sat in her chair again.

"If we're lucky." He replied.

_So much for my plan to get away from him _she thought. When he got stubborn like this there would be no way for her to stop him short of breaking his leg. _That's an idea _she brightened for a moment at the thought, but then realized that it would not stop him only slow both of them down as he hobbled after her on crutches. She might as well accept it that "Meathead" was coming with her. With that thought a little bubble of hope started to rise up out of her stomach and into her chest making her heart beat a little faster. _Stop that _she told herself.

"Anyway," the tribesman continued "They wouldn't let me take the map since it was so old, so I had to make a copy."

"Oh no!" the metalbender said as she dropped her head onto the table. Toph had never seen any of the young man's art work but she had heard a lot of criticisms of it and realism had never been a word associated with anything he had ever done.

"Hey, you always said you liked my art." He said in a sullen tone.

"I'm blind, you idiot."

"Doesn't mean I don't appreciate the positive re-enforcement."

"We're going to die, lost and alone in the middle of the Earthkingdom." Toph moaned, while banging her head on the table again.

"I did a good job, besides all we have to do is keep going due south for five hundred 'milles' and we can't miss it." He pronounced 'milles' as me-lays. Toph had never heard the word before and asked

"Five hundred whats?

"Milles" He smiled proudly, "that empire I told you about, I wonder what their name was? Maybe I should call them the 'foot nomads' or maybe the 'walking nomads' you know like the air nomads, since they traveled around so much, but by walking, not flying like the airnomads… 'toe nomads' that would…"

"Sokka…." Toph said with a rising inflection letting a little frustration creep into her voice. She knew Sokka and when he got excited like this ideas would just start flooding into his brain, and trying to follow his thoughts became impossible.

"What?" he looked at her expectantly, seeing the expression on her face he realized he was going off again and tried to regain his original thought.

"Foot?, Feet? Toes? MILLES!, yes so the 'Toe Nomads' measured distances in milles which was their word for one thousand, because they measured everything by one thousand paces. A pace is two steps." He began to walk two fingers across the map as though his hand was a little man.

"Any way, according to the map I found, the distance from here to Gaoling is five hundred milles or five hundred thousand paces which is one million steps. Now we should be able to walk about three thousand paces in an hour or three milles. If we walk seven hours a day, with a one hour break for lunch, we should be able to cover twenty one milles a day, six days a week, with one day off for resting and resupplying, that makes one hundred and twenty six milles a week, which means we should be able to make the trip in one month. This will leave me plenty of time to get to the coast so dad can pick me up to help him salvage the fleet we had to scuttle during the war."

_Sokka and his schedules _she thought wryly _I just hope he included potty breaks _Toph knew that it would be impossible to keep to one of the young man's schedules but she loved the fact that he thought about these things. She was proud of him for going to all the effort, the research, the planning, it was something she would never bother with. He really was different than anyone else she knew.

* * *

That night Sokka laid his possessions out on his bed deciding what he was going to take with him on the journey. He had lost everything he had started with all those long months ago, when he and his sister had left their home to find the Avatar.

His father had replaced his machete, his war club, and most importantly his boomerang. It wasn't "boomerang" but it was a boomerang. Beside it was a new skinning knife, this one made of metal, that Sokka had just recently replaced himself.

Then there were the swords. When he had returned the giant eel hound to his master, Piandao had asked after Space Sword, not seeing the black blade with the young man. Sokka explained that it was lost in battle. The teacher looked at his student for a moment then offered the younger swordsman the sifu's own sword. Sokka was shocked into silence by the offer, all he could do was kneel before him and shake his head, unable to accept such a gift.

"I can make a new sword" The master explained. "But I cannot make a student more worthy to carry this one. Please accept this poor gift from an old man who has seen his last great adventure. Of all the blades I have made this sword is second only to your own black blade, now lost, it should not be left to rust, hanging above my fire place. Please let it have at least one more great adventure."

Sokka, tears streaming down his face could not refuse, and accepted the gift.

"On loan" The young man managed to choke out.

"Alright, on loan until the day you return to me and make a new sword for yourself." Piandao answered tears in his own eyes. "It is called 'Spring Rain'."

Yes as Sokka looked at the sword on his bed he knew it would be coming with him where ever he went until he returned it to his master.

Next to 'Spring Rain' were the short and long Kyoshi swords as well as the two fans that Suki had given him. He was a Kyoshi warrior after all and should be armed as one. He would keep the fans they were compact and fairly light. He thought long and hard on the swords but eventually he acknowledged that one sword was more than enough for any journey and he was going to have to carry everything himself there would be no Appa to carry his belongings for him this time.

After the Kyoshi weapons were his new throwing knives and darts. He had gotten them after training with Mai. He had always been impressed with her skill, and had made his own holsters for the new weapons.

"Leather is pretty but it doesn't breath, sweat dries it out, and it squeaks. Stick with a good quality cotton cloth." Mai had advised him.

He had taken her advice and made his own. He was careful about the color choosing a brown that matched the brown of his own skin, so unless you were looking for them you would not notice them under his long sleeves, which he wore now, just to hide the holsters and their blades. The knives and darts themselves were also brown. He had had the blade smith "brown" them as they were made. "Browning" was a method blade smiths had of covering the steel with an oxide coating to protect it from corrosion, which luckily also came very close to Sokka's normal skin tone. The holsters which carried a layer of knives on top and a second layer of smaller darts underneath alternating with the knives were made for his forearms and his lower legs. An added advantage of this was that the weapons and the holsters acted as armor, protecting his lower limbs, and allowed him to block attacks without having to wear obvious vambraces and grieves. Yes the throwing knives and holsters were coming with him.

After the weapons were just his clothes. Four sets of underwear, four pairs of socks, an extra pair of pants, an extra top, and a heavy blanket, he had never replaced his sleeping bag.

_Well that was it_ he thought, _looks like I'm going into battle not a long hike, but can't be too careful_. He would have his map and his map tube but there was still a lot he needed. Water skins, soap, something to carry the soap in, food that would last for weeks on the road. And something to carry all of this in. that meant only one thing. Tomorrow he would have to go shopping. The young man's eyes lit up at the prospect.

* * *

The next morning before he could escape his sister stopped him and reminded him that he was to help Iroh move in that afternoon.

Sokka had convinced the retired general to move in with Katara and Aang. He was not going to have his little sister living alone in a house with her weird tattooed boyfriend, even if the boyfriend was only twelve and the Avatar.

"Monk shmonk!" he had told Katara, "It ain't gonna happen so get used to it sis."

This meant that Sokka now had to help the prosperous tea shop owner move all his possessions into the house.

The house was full of activity as Suki and Ty Lee packed up to leave on their trip to Kyoshi Island. And it felt as if it was not long before a gentle knock on the door that afternoon announced the arrival of the grey bearded old man. He had his tsungi horn under one arm and his pai sho set under the other. Behind him in the street Sokka was unloading a cart full of his possessions.

"That is probably for the best. Haulage is much more reliable than produce after all. You don't have to worry about spoilage." The young warrior was heard to say as he paid the carter.

Once the older gentleman was settled in his new home, Sokka had surrendered his own bed, and would share Aang's for this one night. The old firebender announced that tonight would be music night. So after dinner, when everything was cleared away and the dishes washed, Iroh made tea for everyone and they all gathered in the living room.

Sokka brought out his recorder and accompanied Iroh on his tsungi horn, while Ty Lee gave an interpretive dance to summer. The dance was quite energetic and earned all of Aang's attention, as well as a few missed notes from Sokka and truth be told one or two from the old general as well.

Aang then sang an air nomad song which was really quite lovely.

After his song Sokka brought out a hand drum he had made and Katara joined him in a Water Tribe song which was in an old language. None of the others had ever heard anything like it. It was a chant more than a song, starting low then suddenly jumping up two octaves into a high pitched scream, then returning to the original chant.

The water tribe siblings became so involved in the song that they both stood and began to dance around an imaginary fire in the center of the room. Aang and Iroh were mesmerized by the primal feeling and the beauty of both the song and the dance.

Ty Lee was fascinated by the young man as he became a hunter pursuing his prey, who was danced by his sister. No, she realized they were not the hunter and the prey, but the spirit of the hunter and the spirit of the prey. It touched her deeply and she had tears in her eyes when the prey was killed and its' spirit returned to the sky.

Toph loved the strong rhythm of the song and the dance, she was surprised by how softly the dancers stepped, their feet were feather light as they danced around the "fire".

Suki felt both the song and the dance lacked structure.

Afterwards the two dancers embraced, then they explained that the song and dance is a famous one in the tribe about a hunter who is seeking a wily prey, a snow fox, and when he finally kills the fox he asks its' forgiveness, telling the spirit of the fox that its' flesh will feed his family, his bones will be made into weapons, and his beautiful pelt will be the bride price to the family of the girl that the hunter loves.

Suki then performed a dance from her home island. It was very stylized and formal, and made use of her fans. It was really quite beautiful, and the young woman moved so gracefully and with such precision, that Sokka could not take his eyes off of her.

They next tried to get Toph to sing or dance for the group but she vehemently refused.

Iroh then ended the evening by singing the Song of the Four Seasons.

Winter, spring,

Summer and fall.

Winter, spring,

Summer and fall

Four seasons,

Four loves

Four seasons

For love

As the party broke up and the members of the household began to go to bed, Sokka took his sister's hand and led her out to the garden behind the house.

"Well, sis, I just wanted to say that between this trip, and the fleet and Zuko, it's going to be months, maybe longer before I see you again, and… Well not that you have ever needed me…, but at least I was near all the time."

"I've always needed you Sokka, you're my big brother, you're the one…"

The young man held up his hand and gently stopped her before she could go on. He then offered her his two hands and she reached out and took them.

"Katara, this is going to be…, well I'm frightened that by the time we see each other again we'll be different. That you won't be my little sister, you'll be a young woman, who won't need a big brother anymore."

"When I am older than Gran Gran I will still need my big brother." She said with confidence.

"Well if you ever need me for any reason, just get the word to me and I will be here. No matter where I am or what I am doing I will be here for you."

"I know! I have always known that you would." She told him.

They stood holding each others' hands in the dark garden.

Finally Sokka squeezed her hands and said.

"One more thing"

"This is the, don't have sex speech, isn't it?" She asked

"Yup" he answered. "And it is going to be even more painful and embarrassing for me than it will be for you so don't interrupt, just let me get through it, pretend you are listening, and then you can ignore me like you always have."

"I've always listened to you." Katara protested.

"And you've always ignored me, oh mistress of the purple berries."

This at least got a smile from his sister. Sokka then went on

"I know you love Aang and he loves you, but you are still very young, you have plenty of time, I know how much you can want someone. I know you think that it will be no big thing to take that next step, but now I also know that it is not a step but a giant leap over a great chasm, and you won't know just how wide or how deep that chasm is until you are in the air trying to get over it."

"It changes everything Katara. Oh you tell yourself that you know the other person and that you love them and that you will spend the rest of your life with them, but it changes everything. You don't know who you will be let alone who the other person will be afterward."

"You have time, take it. Don't be like your stupid big brother and ruin everything, and make two people miserable just because…"

He trailed off then, but he took a deep breath and finished with.

"After all that's what big brothers are for, to totally mess up and to show you what not to do."

With that he gave her a sad smile, held up her hands and squeezed them one last time, then let them go. Katara reached out and pulled him into a hug which he returned as if he never wanted to let her go.

* * *

The next morning everyone was up early. Iroh off to the Jasmine Dragon, Katara and Aang to see everyone else off on their journeys. Suki and Ty Lee were in their full Kyoshi Warrior make up, uniforms, armor, and weapons, (Suki had insisted). Suki had a small duffel bag over one shoulder, the acrobat had two large ones. Sokka dressed in a long sleeve water tribe top and pants had his new back pack which was festooned with his sword, his map case, as well as any number of strange unidentifiable objects. Toph was dressed in her simple green tunic and pants with her yellow surcoat and studded leather belt, and her travel bag over her shoulder.

Sokka offered to carry Suki's bag but she refused, with ill grace. He then offered to help Ty Lee who gladly passed one of her bags off to him, Aang took the other and almost fell over from the weight.

"No thanks, I'm fine" Toph said under her breath.

Just as they were heading for the door, there was a loud chittering and a black and white blur flew into the room and landed on Sokka's head.

"Hey little buddy, no sorry you can't come with me on this trip."

There followed a long series of chitters and barks between the water tribe warrior and the lemur. At one point Sokka pointed out Katara and then Aang to Momo and chittered a long series of what sounded like instructions. Momo responded several times then flew out the window into the garden.

"What was that about?" Katara asked, she put her hands on her hips looking suspiciously at her brother.

"Nothing" he replied," I was just telling the little guy where I had hid some leechee nuts for him in the garden."

Sokka then adjusted his burdens and headed for the door.

The trip to the train station was a quiet one for all three couples. Even as they waited for the train there was little conversation. Finally as the train pulled in, Katara and Aang pulled Sokka and Toph into a group hug.

"I'll miss you big brother, and I'll miss you little sister" the waterbender told her sibling and her friend.

Sokka shook the Avatar's hand and with a stern look said to him

"Don't forget what I told you."

"Never" was Aang's reply.

Ty Lee came over and hugged Sokka then stepped away.

"What was that for? We're all going on the train together." He asked her.

"Oh are we? I must have forgotten." The pretty young warrior replied.

* * *

On the trip out of the city Sokka and Toph sat on one side of the car and Suki and Ty Lee sat on the facing side. No one spoke. Finally they came to the station where the tribesman and the earthbender we're to get off, the Kyoshi warriors where going to continue on to the ferry landing. Sokka passed the duffle bags he had been carrying for her over to Ty Lee who pulled him into another hug. She then reached for Toph and pulled her into a hug.

"Be nice to him, he really likes you." The acrobat whispered to the earthbender as they hugged.

Sokka held out his arms to Suki, but instead of walking into the hug she bowed formally to the warrior, caught off guard the swordsman responded in kind. The commander of the Kyoshi Warriors made sure she bowed lower than he did.

I'll write." He told her.

"Fine" she replied coldly.

* * *

The young man watched the train pull out of the station, then he offered his hand to his friend, who took it and they stepped down off of the platform into the road.

"Tui and La!" the water tribesman exclaimed as he looked at the road.

"What?" Toph asked him.

"The road, it's a churned up mess, full of animal dung, ostrich horse droppings, debris, and anything else you can imagine. I thought it would be bad but not this bad. You can't walk on that with bare feet, you'll get every disease know to man and a few more besides."

Sokka took off his back pack and re-slung it around so that it was hanging on his chest. He had to be careful that he did not wack himself in the head with his sword that was tied onto the side. Once he had it settled he squatted down in front of Toph and said.

"Climb on"

"What?" she asked

"Climb on, I'll carry you."

"Sokka you can't carry me this whole trip!"

"Not the whole trip just till we get past this really nasty part here then I'll put you down. Now come on my knees hurt."

Reluctantly Toph slung her pack around to her back and throwing her arms around the young man's neck she hoisted herself up onto his back. Sokka used his arms to pull her legs up around his waist then stood up. It took him a moment to adjust to all the weight he was now carrying but finally he got it and started off down the road, trying to avoid the worst of the muck.

The young girl settled herself on the young man's back. She could feel his muscles moving under her as she pulled herself tighter onto to him in a warm hug. Her heart beat a little faster and her stomach seemed to flutter inside her at the contact. Up here out of contact with her element she was truly blind but for right now she didn't really care.

* * *

To be continued:

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* * *

**

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Comments:

Thanks to all who have put this story in their alerts and in their favs I really appreciate it, and thanks especially to all those who have sent in reviews. They really do keep me going.

This was another really long chapter I will try to tighten them up in the future.

Finally I have got them on the road together and the story has begun. Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you will continue with the story.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	7. Chapter 7

I'll Walk You Home pt 7

Chapter 4

Pt.1

Secret Tunnel

Sokka was a hunter. He was used to travelling long distances across the ice fields of his home, dragging a sled behind him, looking for game. He was taller now than he had been a short six months ago. Well to be honest he was taller now than he had been a month ago. He was going through a growth spurt and he was already taller than anyone he knew, he even had a centimeter or maybe two on Zuko. His long legs with his long stride ate the "milles".

Toph had never actually walked any great distance. She had walked from room to room in her family's great house on the estate in Gaoling. She had run away a number of times but had never gotten very far. She had gone shopping with Sokka, who just sort of meandered around the shops. She had run for her life with Sokka dragging her along by her hand. But she had never had to just keep up with the hunter when he was on the trail. It took her almost two paces to match his one, so she either had to almost jog along beside him or run to catch up to him every minute or so. The young man had been talking nonstop for the last hour, about anything and everything, where Toph was already breathing hard just to keep up with him. The small earthbender suddenly realized that not only could Sokka keep this up all day, but that he had every intention of doing so. She was not happy.

"I can see why Mai is in such good shape." The water tribesman was nattering on at the moment. "The added weight of these knives and senbon really make a difference, and I'm not carrying a tenth of what Mai lugs around. The ones on my legs make the biggest difference they could really slow me down if I'm not careful."

It was at that point that Sokka felt a familiar trembling coming up from the ground which stopped his monologue. _Earthbending_ he told himself. _Coming from behind me_. His right hand went to the grip on his war club strapped to his thigh as he spun to meet the possible threat, the steely look of the warrior on his face, what he saw caused his expression to change into one of shock and awe.

Toph was coming at him fast, riding on top of two waves of earth twice as tall as Sokka was. She was leaning forward and swinging her arms as her earthbending propelled her along at a speed greater than a running ostrich-horse.

To his credit the young hunter reacted quickly and threw himself out of the way to the side of the trail. _Tuck and roll_ he told himself, but he was not used to the weight of his rucksack, which threw him completely off balance and he ended up doing a face plant into the ground.

"Hurry up 'Snoozles'" The earthbender shouted, as she passed him, "we don't have all year!"

Sokka picked himself up, and dusted himself off. He looked and saw the dust cloud of the young girl's passage recede in the distance as she continued up the trail into the foot hills.

"YOU ARE SUCH A BRAT!." He yelled after her. He wasn't sure but he thought he heard her distinctive laugh recede with the dust cloud.

The warrior checked his gear as he moved back onto the trail. It was all still there, he was glad to discover. He patted himself on the back for taking the precaution of wrapping "Spring Rain" in a piece of heavy canvas. If he returned his master's sword in any condition other than the one he had received it in the young swordsman would be heartbroken.

Once back on the trail, Sokka took a deep breath and started after the earthbender at a loping run. He was used to this increased pace, as a hunter when he found fresh sign of his prey he would drop the harness to his sled and would start off for it and could keep it up for hours, especially when something had found his fresh sign and he became the prey.

His rucksack bounced on his back, his note pad banged on his hip, his water skin patted on his side. He would have to make adjustments the next time they stopped.

It took the young man a little over an hour before he saw a small blob of green and yellow by the side of the trail up ahead. He went to wipe the sweat that was starting to sting his eyes again and hit his forehead against the throwing daggers under his sleeve, again. He shifted his arm and wiped his face on the sleeve covering his upper arm. He really had to improve his memory somehow. As he walked, trying to look nonchalant, he pulled up his note book and was about to write, "remember, do not wipe your face on your forearm" but he saw that he had already written such a note, and had also added a check mark to it. He added a second check mark to the note, but then thought a moment and added a note below it "get invited to Ember Island". The run up to this point had driven home just how tiring it was to do anything with the added weight of the throwing weapons attached to his lower limbs, which meant that Mai must have a very fit body hidden under all those weapons and clothes she wore, and purely for academic reasons, just to confirm his theory of course, he would very much like to see the dour girl in one of those Fire Nation beach outfits that Ty Lee had worn the one time they had gone swimming in the river at Ba Sing Se.

As Sokka approached the earthbender he could see that she was lying on a pile of rocks. He felt a huge smile spread across his face. Toph may be a brat but she definitely had style. He had tremendous admiration for the blind girl, not just for her bending ability, which was beyond comprehension, but more for her style and shear chutzpa.

She had to be the bravest person he knew, with more courage than even Aang or his sister, and far more courage then he himself would ever be able to muster. His one disappointment was that she did not like him. Oh she tolerated him, would take his hand when she needed to, but she obviously couldn't care less about him, having said as much on a number of occasions.

* * *

Toph lay by the side of the trail napping. She had not slept well for a week, what with all the Sokka/Suki tension, not to mention all the tension she created for herself over her feelings for the water tribe boy. At first she had planned to simply position herself lazily by the road side and make a snarky comment as he passed, but she was tired from the earthbending, and from not getting much sleep, and the sun was warm, and she had fallen asleep.

The metalbender felt the handsome tribesman walking up the trail. She knew he was handsome because "Peachfuzz" was always talking about his long strong arms, his beautiful brown skin, his gorgeous blue eyes. Toph wasn't sure what blue and brown were, she knew that they were colors but that was all, she just knew that the acrobat liked them on Sokka.

She felt him move slowly over to her and sit beside her on her bed of rocks. She felt the shadow of his head move over her face. She felt his large, strong, warm hand rest gently on her stomach spreading his warmth through all of her. She felt his breath on her as he lowered his face to hers. Her heart began to race, her stomach began to flutter. She could hardly breathe. She heard his deep voice, the voice he used to use when he spoke quietly to Suki, but now he only used it when he was talking to her.

"I forgot that you can travel by earthbending, I am such an idiot. You could be home tomorrow if you wanted to, couldn't you?"

"I love you too" she whispered in reply.

"What? I didn't catch that. Toph are you asleep?"

* * *

The young girl's eyes shot open, and she put her hands on the stones she was lying on. She sent out a wave of earthbending and the world suddenly came into focus. Sokka was standing on the trail about ten long strides (maybe twenty for the short girl) away from her. She had been sleeping, dreaming or at least some strange mix of dream and reality. _Did I actually say that?_ She asked herself _did he hear what I said?_. The hunter gave no indication that he had. She ran the last few seconds of the dream through her head and realized he obviously had not heard her, even if she had actually spoken her secret thoughts out loud.

"What if I was." She finally shot back at him, as she sat up. "It took you so long to get here I thought I would have to camp over night."

"Sorry!" He said though it did not sound like he was.

Sokka walked over to the recumbent earthbender and offered her his hand. She took it reluctantly, fearing what the contact would do to her but wanting it all the same. _I'm such a coward_ she told herself, as she took his hand. She felt the now familiar change to her heart. He lifted her up onto her feet and then leaned down, picked up her bindle and handed it to her.

"So, you could be home tomorrow, couldn't you?" he asked her again.

"That depends, are you going to walk like a normal human?"

"Toph, I am a normal human! As a matter of fact, I am the only normal human you know."

"'Meathead' you are not normal, I'm not even sure you are even human."

"Oh ha ha!" he said as he started back toward the path. "I am a lot more normal than the one and only Avatar, who has conversations with his past selves all the time, or my sister who is the last and only waterbender in the Southern Water Tribe."

Toph had followed him back to the path and unconsciously they had both started to walk, more meander, up the path into the foot hills.

"And let's not even talk about you, the 'Blind Bandit' who is the greatest bender in the world and has even invented a whole new form of bending, something that hasn't been done in the history of the entire planet, probably in the universe. You are not normal, you are probably the definition of unique."

"That proves my point!" Toph crowed, "out of everyone I know you are the most different."

"Oh yes, and as you are so fond of saying 'non benders don't count'"

Sokka said this last without obvious rancor but she could tell that there was a little touch of hurt in his voice.

"I never said that!" The master bender said with conviction. She would know if she had ever said anything that stupid.

"You say it all the time, Toph."

"No I don't!" she replied emphatically.

Toph racked her brain but she could not remember ever thinking such a silly thing, let alone saying it, let alone saying it all the time. "Meathead" must be making it up. After all he was a non bender and he was the smartest, bravest, kindest, most thoughtful guy she knew. He counted more to her than anyone else in the world. He must have misunderstood her at some point. But deep down in her mind there was a nagging little doubt. She decided to change the conversation, which with Sokka was the easiest thing in the world.

"Hey Sokka, what is brown?" She asked her companion.

The young man, who had been marshalling his arguments with specific incidents when the metalbender had said those exact words, and was having trouble finding any in his memory, was stopped by her question. His mind shifted to the new topic with a slight shudder like a sail that has spilled its wind, but he quickly recovered.

"Well, it's a color of course… hmmm?" he faded out as he started to try to come up with examples that would make sense to a blind earthbender.

"Of course the bigger question is what is color? I mean is it a property of a specific object or is it a property of the light that strikes that object, or maybe with a crystal it is light that goes through an object. That is a very intriguing question. Ahhh…. Ok, do you remember… no you weren't there…. Ok ok I've got it, do you remember when we were walking to the Western Air Temple?"

Toph turned her head down to hide her smile. It was so easy, just ask "Meathead" a general question about something and he was so smart he would start asking himself questions that you couldn't even understand let alone answer. He would be going on for hours until something else distracted him. All she had to do now was make a noise now and again to make him think that she was actually listening to him.

The two of them, Sokka talking the entire time, continued up the trail into the Serpents' Pass,.

* * *

"Take light for example" Sokka was saying after about two hours, "is it a thing or is it like something else?"

Toph made a non committal grunt in reply. They were walking along a narrow ledge earthbended years before out of a sheer cliff. The area felt familiar to the girl but she couldn't place it yet.

"Light bounces off of things, you only have to go out on a summer's day back home to see the sun light bouncing off of all the snow and ice to know that. You have to wear special eye protectors to keep from going blind. So light is like a thing, a rock say, that if you throw it at a wall it will bounce off. But light also goes through stuff, like glass, or crystal. A rock won't go through glass, well it will but not like light does. So light is like both a thing and a not thing, you know what I mean? "

"Sokka, there are people up ahead." The earthbender cut the young theorist off.

"Yeah, I thought there might be some others using this pass. Are they walking towards us or in the same direction we are?" The young man asked her. He looked ahead but saw no one on the trail.

"Neither, they are just standing around in a long line, and there are a lot of them too."

"That's strange… Where are they?"

"Just up ahead were the path drops down into a valley, wait…"

The earthbender became thoughtful as she sent out a wave of earthbending. Sokka could feel the familiar small vibrations through the soles of his feet.

"Sokka! Just where are we?" Irritation now entering her tone.

They came over the last rise and began to follow the path down into a flooded valley between the peaks of two mountains. As they, well Sokka was the only one that could actually now see, from the top of the pass there was a long line of maybe one hundred people as well as assorted animals and small carts lined up on the winding path. At the very bottom was a wide gap of water and then the mountain chain started up on the opposite side. Sokka thought he could even see the little island that Toph had created the last time they had come through here. On the opposing side was another line of people most moving slowly up the path but many were also waiting as the people just ahead of him were. He could see that someone had strung a heavy rope across the pass and that a large flat bottomed boat was being hauled across from one side to the other. The boat was full of people and baggage and was acting as a ferry to get people across the gap.

"The Serpents Pass of course."

"WHAT?" she asked, disbelief, anger, and horror all fighting to be the dominant tone in her voice. Anger appeared to be the winner and raised its hands above its head in triumph.

The young Earthkingdom couple ahead of them in line turned to watch the argument that seemed to be starting between the odd pair that had just joined the line. One was a heavily laden Water Tribe boy, judging by his skin color, clothes and blue eyes, and an even younger Earth Kingdom girl with very interesting pale green eyes. The young wife, Liung was her name, thought that they had to be a couple. It was obvious to even the most casual observer from the way they acted towards one another.

"'THE SERPENTS PASS'? You idiot! I almost died the last time we came through here!" the earth kingdom girl shouted.

"Well I 'm not the one who said they were never setting foot on a boat again even if my life depended on it. How else were we going to go south, if we couldn't use the ferry.

_This should be good!_ Liung thought to herself. It was very boring to be standing in line all morning and this fight should be entertaining if nothing else.

"Oh great brainless one, did you forget about the part of the path that is UNDER WATER!" Toph asked Sokka. "You know that part where I almost DROWNED!"

Liung and Chung, her husband, were both watching with great amusement the discomfiture of the Water Tribe boy.

"No I didn't forget." Sokka explained. "I had two plans for this part of the pass."

"And they are?"

"Well, one idea was, since you are the greatest earthbender in the universe, unequaled in recorded history or even in legend…"

"You know," Toph cut in smiling, as she folded her arms across her chest, "the way you say that never gets old."

"…you could earthbend a tunnel under the water." The tribesman continued.

Liung turned to her husband and asked him,

"Why didn't you think of that?"

Chung involved in the argument between the unusual couple behind him in line was surprised by his wife's question and responded with only,

"Ahhh…"

Sokka, somewhat distracted by the couple ahead of him took a moment to get back on track, but finally continued,

"My second idea is not as good but just in case there was, I don't know, like a geologic problem, or something and you couldn't tunnel under the water, I bought these great big water skins." He indicated with his thumbs a large bundle tied to his back pack. "We'll need them for the desert anyway."

"Did you get water skins for the desert?" Liung asked Chung sharply.

"You were the one doing the shopping!" Her husband shot back.

"I was shopping for food and household goods. 'Oh no leave the supplies to me, that's man's work.' You said."

Sokka and Toph took a step back from the married couple ahead of them. Neither of them wanted to get involved in a domestic dispute.

"I'm an earthbender not a waterbender!" Chung heatedly replied, "what do I know about water skins."

People farther down the line were beginning to turn around to see what was going on towards the back. Standing in line was very boring. Some of them even stepped out to the side to get a better look.

Liung turned to Sokka and asked him.

"How were the water skins going to help you get through the pass?"

The boy taken by surprise turned to his companion then turned back to the young woman ahead of him, he also noticed the rest of the people in the line looking at him. He suddenly felt very self conscious with all those eyes staring at him, and he started to freeze up.

Toph could feel what was happening. She could feel her friend's heart begin to race. It was pounding so hard she could feel it through the background vibrations of all the people now staring at him expectantly. For some reason Toph could not explain, Ty Lee's words came back to her at that point _"Be nice to him, he really likes you."_ and instead of sitting back and enjoying his embarrassment she turned her face towards him and said.

"It's just me, Sokka, tell me the plan."

The water tribesman turned to the sound of his friend's voice and saw her smiling face. It wasn't her trade mark "Blind Bandit" grin, but a quiet, comforting smile that calmed him. He looked into Toph's face and saw support and confidence in his abilities. His heart slowed and his voice returned. He forgot about all the strangers looking at him and only saw the lovely face of his friend, he always forgot just how pretty Toph was, until he looked at her face, then he would discover again those beautiful pale green eyes.

"Well I thought" he began quietly to her, then turned and got louder to address the group, "that water skins could keep water out just as well as they can keep water in, and these are really big water skins. I mean they are whole Koala-goat skins, and I have four of them. I figured I could blow them up. Tie them together and make a raft out of them. Then you" and he turned again to Toph as he said this, " could ride on the raft with all our stuff and I would tow you across."

There were murmurs of understanding and nods of approval throughout the crowd.

Liung turned to Chung and pointing at his chest said.

"Now, you see. There is a good husband." with this she pointed to Sokka. "They are just starting out and he is already planning ahead for the future. Making sure his wife is going to be safe and secure. Not like you" and her finger now returned to indicate her chosen mate, "whose only plan was to stumble on this stupid roadblock and then to wait all morning in a stupid line, just so we can pay some highway robber a gold piece to cross this stupid little gap."

The murmurs of understanding turned into ones of disdain for Chung and support for Liung as she scolded her husband.

"I still think the tunnel idea is the better solution." The tribesman said.

"What tunnel?" Someone in the crowd shouted.

"Well I thought that earthbenders could bend a tunnel under the water to the other side and we could just walk through." The young man explained.

"Why not a bridge?" Another voice asked.

Sokka was about to answer when he felt the tell tale vibrations of earthbending coming up through the soles of his boots. He had felt that same vibration in training grounds from here to the Fire Nation and knew exactly what they meant. His body did as well and he unconsciously had already bent his knees to absorb the shock of the earth pillar that suddenly rose up under him. He was surprised at the slow speed at which it rose and the relatively low height that it attained. He was used to being shot across the field when this had happened in the past. He turned to Toph and saw a little grin flit across her face.

"Thanks" he said to his friend. Then he addressed the crowd from his new elevated position.

"A bridge would probably draw the wrath of the Unagi, or Serpent, or whatever it is called. The last time we came through here the Serpent attacked us on the path, so anything above the water would probably be destroyed by it."

More and more people turned to look and listen to the fifteen year old speaker. The general murmurs became speech as people spoke amongst themselves and then started shouting questions to the boy.

"You've been through the pass?"

"The Serpent is real?"

"Really, I always thought it was a legend."

"How far is it to the end?"

"How difficult is the trail on the other side?"

"What's this about a tunnel?"

"There's a tunnel?"

"Where?"

"It must be a secret tunnel."

"I've heard of a secret tunnel."

"Isn't there a song about a secret tunnel?"

The teenage boy tried to answer some of the questions but many were lost in the general noise and shouting and he never heard them, let alone the side conversations that were taking place in amongst the members of the crowd. The people farther back could hardly be heard at all and they in turn could hardly hear what the tribesman was saying so the most outlandish conversations were taking place in the back.

"Who is he?"

"Don't know"

"Awfully dark, isn't he?"

"Water tribe obviously"

"How do you know?"

"Skin"

"Eyes"

"Clothes"

"I can't see his eyes."

"Ohh, I've never seen a water tribesman before." A little girl said.

"Do you think it's true what they say about the water tribe men?" an older woman asked.

"It must be, just look at him." A young woman replied in a throaty voice.

"I don't know, I only hope what they say about the water tribe women is true." A young man said.

Sokka was trying to respond to the shouted questions.

"There is no secret tunnel, but if there are earthbenders in the group we could build one. The trail ahead is not that difficult, we've been through it before."

With this last he reached down to Toph and beckoned her to join him on his raised platform. She just grinned up at him and shook her head.

"Oh no," she told him, "This is all yours 'hubby'."

The young earthbender was enjoying every second of this. She would admit, if pressed, that she liked public attention, but not like this. She loved having crowds of people cheering for her, adoring her, but this sort of situation was her idea of torture. To have over a hundred people shouting questions at you, expecting answers would be unbearable. She would have buried them all under a mountain if it had happened to her. But to see her friend suffering was fun for her, though truth be told, now that he was over his initial fright, Sokka was doing very well with the crowd. She had noticed that when the young warrior got excited his mind could go in five different directions at once. His brain would start firing ideas faster than his mouth could get the words out and he would appear, well, foolish and inept, but here with the crowd he was answering five different questions at once. He was really doing a good job, and she felt a swell of pride in her chest as she saw him control the situation. Sokka had finally found his element it would seem. _He really is amazing_ Toph thought.

"The trail ahead is not that difficult a pregnant couple traveled over it." The fifteen year old was telling the crowd just then.

"Who's pregnant?" Someone in the back asked.

"Not me?" her companion answered.

"He's pregnant?"

"He's a he."

"But he's water tribe."

"That doesn't make any difference."

"No! No! His wife is pregnant."

"He's awfully young to have a pregnant wife."

"But he's water tribe."

"Say no more." A younger man said with a wink and a nudge to his companion.

The news that Toph was pregnant eventually worked its way back up to the front of the line, which was actually the back of the line but everyone was now facing the back of the line so in reality it was the front of the line.

When Liung heard a whispered conversation behind her about how the teenage water tribe boy's wife was pregnant, she looked at Toph and a big motherly smile formed on her face. She turned to husband and cooed,

"Ahhh… their pregnant." Then she elbowed Chung in the ribs adding. "That's a real husband."

"I've been under a lot of stress lately." Her husband responded defensively, "what with the war and work, and being on the road. It's not my fault."

Liung walked up to the little earthbender and folded her into a hug telling her.

"You two are so brave to go out into the world in your condition. Your parents just didn't understand young love, did they? If there is anything I can do just let me know."

Toph, who was unaware of her fecund condition, was confused by the young woman's actions but before she could respond she heard Sokka shouting to the crowd.

"Are there any benders in the group?" He was holding his hands up trying to get the noise under control.

Chung, who was tired of being criticized by his wife, and the crowd, immediately raised his hand. Sokka acknowledged him and then saw three more hands go up in the crowd. He also noted that down by the boat landing there was a small group of men separate from the crowd. One was a smaller, somewhat garishly dressed older man, the other four were much larger and at least three of them were armed. The tribesman noted a pair of tiger hook swords, the kind Jet used to carry, slung on the back of the largest, another had a long spear on his shoulder, the one next to him looked to have a sword of some sort at his belt, Sokka couldn't tell what kind. And the forth was wearing an old Earth Army uniform with the issue conical steel helmet, but the young man could see no weapons.

The boy returned to the task at hand and shouted out.

"Do any of you have experience in bending tunnels or mining?"

"I'm a miner." Chung shouted out at once. There was a murmur of approval from the crowd, so he added.

"I'm Chung the Miner"

The crowd cheered for "Chung the Miner". Liung let go of Toph and turned and cheered for her husband. She stepped over to him and took his arm.

"Could all the benders please meet me over there," Sokka shouted while pointing to a spot off to the side at the top of the rise.

"With the guidance of 'Chung the Miner'…" The teenager shouted.

At the sound of his name Chung raised his arm again and there was another cheer. Liung squeezed his arm and looked about to burst with pride in her husband.

"We will soon bend a tunnel under the water and all of us will be able to continue on our journey."

There was another general cheer at this news. The young tribesman hopped down off of his dais, the added weight of all his gear almost toppled him but he was just able to keep his feet under him. He was glad he was wearing his steel and leather leg brace. He then walked over to the designated meeting area. Chung and the other benders followed him.

As Sokka was waiting with Chung for the other benders, two men and a woman, to make their way up the slope a young man approached him deferentially and told him,

"I'm not a bender but if there is anything I can do to help I would be glad to."

"Excellent!" The tribesman said. "Just wait here while we get this organized."

Toph walked over to the group as it assembled. This was fun, "seeing" Sokka being all Sokkaish and for once she was not the one receiving the brunt of his ideas. She could just stand and listen and "watch".

Once the benders were all together Sokka began to map out his ideas for the tunnel. He called the young nonbender over to join in, as he did so he noticed the one man had turned into a small group of volunteers. Sokka mapped out his plan using stones, he deferred any of the technical details to Chung and the other benders, who added suggestions. Finally the plan was decided on, the tasks assigned, and the tunneling was about to begin, when a very loud voice caught all of their attention.

"Hey asshole, we don't need any trouble makers around here, you just be on your way."

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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* * *

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**Author's Notes:** Sorry for the cliff-hanger, but I am already over five thousand words and I have a big fight coming up, if I don't end this chapter here it will be well over eight thousand words, and won't be out until next week some time. I promise the next part will finally have some action in it.

Yes, one of our heroes was about to discover the "Sokka uncertainty principle" but he was distracted so quantum mechanics will have to wait.

Chung's name is purely because I thought it sounded like the sound of a miners pick striking dirt and I thought it would be perfect for a miner.

Thank you to all for reading and especially to all who have added this story to their alerts and favorites, and most especially to the reviewers, you really do make all the difference and are keeping this story going. Thank you very much.

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome. I want to get better at this and need the feedback if I am going to improve.


	8. Chapter 8

I'll Walk You Home pt 8

Chapter 4

pt.2

Secret Tunnel

Asshole, Sokka had never heard the word before, or was it two words, or perhaps it was hyphenated. _Does a hyphenated word count as one word or two?_ Sokka asked himself. He knew what an ass was and he knew what a hole was but he was not sure what an asshole was. Maybe it's a family name or something. Though the way the large man with the hook swords who was clambering up the slope with his three companions, was saying it, the tribesman felt sure it was an insult of some kind.

* * *

Asshole, Toph had never heard the word before but she liked it. It had a good sound. Asshole...! Yes the earthbender definitely liked the sound of that word, especially the way the large man coming up the hill was using it. It sounded dirty and nasty and positively impolite. She tucked it away in her mind for use in the future. She would have to ask Sokka what it meant when he had time. Her friend was really good at figuring out what words meant.

* * *

"Uh oh," Chung said, "Those are the enforcers who work for the guy who collects the money for the ferry down there. You better do what they say."

"Me?" The young warrior asked. "What did I do?"

"Hey asshole!" The man shouted again, "yeah, you with the pony tail." He added when Sokka pointed to himself, unsure who the man was talking to.

"It's a warrior's wolf tail!" The water tribe warrior corrected the shouter.

The teenage boy noticed that the four men, who were coming up the slope in a line spread out from the tribesman's left to right, were pulling out their weapons as they approached him. The shouter, who was on the boys far left, pulled his two tiger hook swords out. The spear man, who was a pace or so away from "Hooky", popped the long spear, it was at least half again as tall as Sokka was, off of his shoulder and was aiming it directly at the fifteen year old warrior. Next, going towards Sokka's right was the Earth Army man, he carried no weapons, but his hands were formed into fists and he had the look of an earthbender about him. Last in line on Sokka's extreme right was a large man who pulled a heavy curved bladed sword from the scabbard hanging from his belt.

The four men were still about a hundred paces down slope from the tribesman but they were steadily moving up the hill towards him. "Hooky" was angling off to the young man's left and "Curvy" was moving off to his right. Sokka noticed that everyone that had been standing around him a moment before was now quickly moving away from him and were rejoining the rest of the crowd off to his left. Everyone except Toph, the earthbender was standing a little up slope of and to the right of her friend. She was cracking her knuckles, grinning.

"Listen you stupid fuck!" Hooky was saying. "Either you leave now or we'll make your stay here permanent."

* * *

Sokka had heard the word "fuck" before. It was when he was very young and had, entirely by accident, it really wasn't his fault, run over his father's foot when he was downhill sledding one day. Later he had asked his mother what the word meant. His mother had screamed, and Sokka still shuddered when he remembered the taste of the soap she had used to wash his mouth out. His parents had had a rather loud argument that night and he remembered that his father had had to sleep on Gran Gran's side of the bed for about three days after that. His mother had never told him what the word meant. Though now that he thought about it he remembered that Suki and said it a couple of times when they were… well he really didn't have time for thinking about that right now.

* * *

Toph had never heard the word "fuck" before but now that she had she thought she was in love. _What a great word!_ she thought. Especially the way the large man was using it. She loved the sound of it. It sounded so nasty, and dirty, and evil, and impolite. It had that wonderful "FFFF" sound at the start that you could really sink your teeth into and that great "KUH" sound at the end. She rolled it around in her mouth. She ran her tongue over and through it, exploring all its wonderful possibilities. She had no idea what it meant but that didn't matter. She loved it. She was going to be using it for the rest of her life. She was sure Sokka would like it too. Yes, she was sure that she and Sokka would "Fuck" at every opportunity, they would "Fuck" every chance they got for the rest of their lives. She would have to ask him what it meant.

* * *

Sokka suddenly realized, as he saw the men getting closer to him, that he was in for a fight. He reached over his right shoulder for "Spring Rain" and as his hand touched the grip of the long sword he also realized that he had a problem, because, as his hand touched the canvas that he had meticulously wrapped around the sword to protect it and then had securely lashed the same sword to the side of his rucksack, he understood that it would take him about five minutes to actually free the sword and be able to use it, and he didn't think he had that much time right now.

_Rucksack_ he thought, he should probably take it off. He began to pull on the shoulder straps when he realized he had another problem. This morning when he was gearing up, he had put on his back pack and then had slung his shoulder bag over his head and through his right arm so he could grab snacks on the trail, and he had also slung his small water skin over his head and through his left arm so he could take a drink every now and then. To take off the knapsack he would have to undo the whole process and judging by the speed of the large, heavy, hard looking rock that was flying towards his face he didn't really have time for that either.

Fortunately for the young fighter months of hard training kicked in and he pivoted on his left heel and pulled his head off to the side avoiding the rock by millimeters. But once again the rucksack's weight threw him off balance and he had to windmill his arms to stay on his feet. This had an unforeseen benefit in that his wild attempt to maintain his balance caused him to avoid the second stone flying towards his head. He felt the wind of it as it passed him.

"A little help here Toph?" He asked his companion.

Sokka felt a little earthbending behind him and snuck a quick look up slope but was disappointed to see that the small earthbender had only created a lounge chair out of the stones of the mountain and was reclining into it. All that was needed to complete the picture was a tall drink with an umbrella sticking out of it.

"Oh no, you're the great warrior that insisted he come along and protect me on this trip. So protect me."

"I thought it was supposed to be the other way around!" Sokka said while dodging another rock.

The teenage warrior could see that he was in a lot of trouble. The enemy earthbender had stopped his advance and was stomping rocks up out of the ground and was punching them at the tribesman to keep him occupied, or better yet take him out, while the spearman was making a direct advance and the two swordsmen where flanking him. His only chance was to take them on one at a time and beat them in detail. There was no way he could win against four to one odds.

Sokka leaned to his right, dodging another stone, then jumped to his left putting the spearman directly between the bender and himself. This masked the bender who couldn't attack the water tribesman without hitting his own spearman.

The young hunter knew that most spearmen fought in one of two ways. Either they would stop and poke, or they would charge through holding the spear steady the whole time as though it were a lance. Sokka knew spears, he had been using one since he was four years old, well three and a half really, so he knew his best chance for success was against the spearman, if he could take him out quickly then he could go for the swordsmen at slightly better odds.

Sokka ran down the slope straight for the spearman, who surprised by the tribesman's aggressiveness stopped. _He's a stop and poke fighter._ Sokka smiled as he continued his headlong advance. The spearman thrust at the teen, but the tribesman side stepped to his opponent's right, he could see that the spearman was right handed and would have a harder time swinging the spear to his right because he had stopped in a standard left foot forward stance. Sokka deflected the point using his right forearm which was "armored" with his rosette of throwing knives hidden under his sleeve. The young warrior did not stop but continued charging down the length of the spear, his right hand now around the shaft and his left across his body, right up to the spearman, whose eyes grew wide as Sokka slashed upward with his left forearm, also covered in the steel of his knives. The vambrace caught the spearman right under the chin with such force that his head snapped back, his hands let go of the spear, and fell backwards hitting the ground like a sack of rocks.

_One down_ Sokka thought, putting both hands on the spear. He knew by taking out the spearman he had unmasked the bender and rocks would soon be coming his way. He saw movement out of the corner of his left eye and turned to see "Hooky" coming straight for him. "Hooky" was quick and had changed his advance as soon as he saw Sokka start to move. The swordsman's right hand sword was sweeping down right at Sokka's left leg. The tribesman now had a weapon, unfortunately it was pointed in the wrong direction, all he had was the butt end of the spear near his opponent.

In the instant he had to think Sokka considered letting the sword hit his leg, the brace he was wearing could possibly protect him, but then he realized that with the hook on the sword "Hooky" could just pull Sokka's leg out from under him and the young warrior would be finished. With his peripheral vision the teen saw the bender start to punch rocks at him again.

In a desperation move the young man angled the point of the spear, which was behind him, down into the ground then leaned back on to it. This took all the weight off of his left foot which he lifted waist high off of the ground. He saw a rock go flying through where his head had been. Then he saw the hook sword cut through where his leg had been.

Sokka pushed off with the spear shifting his weight forward and drove his left foot down onto "Hooky's" right forearm that was still low after his swing. The tribesman's heavy boot and brace scrapped down the arm and knocked the sword out of his opponent's hand. With all his weight forward, the teen let go of the spear with his left hand and with his right he raised the butt end up like a sword and parried "Hooky's" left hand sword which was coming down onto the young warriors head. The tribesman also felt the wind of another stone pass just behind his head.

With all his weight on his left leg, Sokka brought his right knee up as hard and as fast as he could right into "Hooky's" groin. As the swordsman doubled over, eyes bulging, the teen smashed his left fist into the side of his opponents head knocking him to the ground.

The hunter turned towards the bender just in time to see a stone heading straight for his face, but at the last instant the rock twitched in its path and missed his head by millimeters, then Sokka caught movement out of the corner of his right eye. "Curvy" was coming up on him. The young warrior turned to face the new threat, when he felt a familiar vibration through the soles of his boots. He instantly brought his feet together and bent his knees as a pillar of stone shot out of the ground and launched him into the air.

He absorbed the initial shock with his thigh muscles, then as he felt the pillar slow he launched himself off of it into the air. Arching over the new swordsman he spun himself in the air in a slow cartwheel. As he passed over his opponent he swung the spear and struck him with the flat part of the spearhead a very sharp blow on the back of his head. "Curvy" dropped his sword, grabbed his head, and yelled

"OWWW!"

Sokka finished the cartwheel by twisting around so he was facing the opposite direction, he displayed none of the elegance, craft, or agility of the pretty young acrobat that had taught him how to do this but he did land on his feet. When all his packs and gear landed on his shoulders a tenth of second later he almost fell over but he managed to stay on his feet somehow.

The fifteen year old now saw "Curvy's" back, and decided why not. He brought the flat of the spear point down on the swordsman head, trying to knock him out, but since his opponent's hands were holding his head, Sokka's blow landed on "Curvy's" hands not his skull.

"OWWWW!" the swordsman screamed as he now stuck his hands under his armpits to relieve the pain.

Taking a breath Sokka turned to the bender again, just in time to see three stones heading right for him. This was it, he knew he could not evade all of them. The teen waited for the hit and hoped he could keep going just long enough to get the bender when one of the stones struck the other two, like a cue ball on a billiard table, and all three went flying off in new directions.

The young warrior took the opportunity thus presented and charged the bender, who was stomping rocks up and punching them at the "pony tail guy" as fast as he could, but somehow they all missed. Sokka swung the spear in a powerful downward strike, the point hitting just where the tribesman was aiming for, on the rim of the benders conical helmet, knocking it down over his face blinding him.

Sokka without a pause continued his charge, reversing his spear and struck, using a running thrust, all of the energy of his body moving down hill, all the power in his arms and legs, all the strength of his visceral muscles was transferred into the butt of the spear which landed dead center of the bender's helmet. It was an impossible move for most spearmen, but the water tribe warrior had been using a spear three quarters of his short life, and he performed it perfectly.

The helmet was smashed into the bender's face, lifting him up off of the ground and knocking him flying backwards down the hill where he landed like a slab of stone.

The warrior turned his spear towards "Curvy" who was standing holding his hands in his armpits. He pulled them out and raised them in surrender towards the young man.

"Stop hitting me." The older man pleaded. "That really fucking hurts, you know. That little asshole doesn't pay us enough to put up with this shit. I quit."

"Me doo!" came a muffled voice from under the helmet over the benders face.

"Me three!" echoed "Hooky" from where he lay on the ground, still holding his crotch. "Oma fucking Shu kid, you are one crazy mother fucker. I'm gonna have to tell my grand kids about this fight, if I can still have grand kids. I think you crushed my fucking nuts."

"That's Oma's fucking truth." Curvy agreed, "Where'd you learn that flying through the air shit, kid?"

"I thing you brode my muddre fuddin node." The bender said sitting up. His helmet fell away with a clang and sure enough his face was covered with blood and his nose did not look right.

"What the fuck happened?" The spearman asked finally coming to.

"We got our asses kicked by some pony tailed kid. That's what happened." Hooky told him.

Sokka limped up the slope to where Toph was standing with a huge grin on her face. When he reached her he pulled her into strong fervent hug.

"Thanks" he told her.

"For what, I didn't do anything." She tried to push him away but he held her close.

"No you only saved my life about ten times is all."

"Ahh, it was only about eight, and besides it was fun."

Toph then relented and putting her arms around her friend she returned the hug with all her might. Her heart pounding and tears in her eyes.

In the quiet that followed Liung's voice was heard to say,

"Now there's a good husband."

A cheer and applause came up from the crowd. The young man lifted his head up and looked over to the crowd, but then he saw something beyond the people in the water.

"Oh fuck!" he said

Toph, still tightly hugging him asked,

"Isn't that a great word. What does it mean?"

"It means that asshole serpent just showed up."

To be continued:

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* * *

****Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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**Author's Notes:** This is a short chapter only about three thousand words but I finally got some action into the story. I hope that the fight scene works for readers. I would really appreciate any feedback you would be willing to give on the fight.

Thank you to all for reading, and to all who have put this story on their alerts and for all the ones who have added it to their favorites, and thanks especially to all the reviewers. I'm trying to write faster. If I haven't responded to your review yet it is because I was trying to get this section out. I hope to get the next part out by next Friday.

Thanks again.

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	9. Chapter 9

I'll Walk You Home pt 9

Chapter 4

pt.3

The Serpent in the Pass

* * *

Sokka turned down slope and pointing shouted out,

"Hooky, Curvy, Spear get these people organized and move them to the reverse side of the ridge line."

"My name's Mou" said the spearman, obviously confused.

"Hooky" looked at the water tribesman for a second then began to move. Sokka had been right, "Hooky" was the quick one. The tiger swordsman had read the young warrior's face, realized the danger, and shifted into action.

"Mou take the right flank, Ho the left, I have the center." "Hooky" grabbed his swords and began to move over to the crowd of people.

"Silence!" "Hooky" shouted to the crowd that had watched the fight just moments before.

"All right we are moving to the opposite slope of the ridge and we are doing it now. There will be no questions or objections!" This last was shouted with an obvious threat in his voice.

It took a moment but with "Hooky", whose name was Yi, Mou and Ho herding them the crowd started to move.

"Earthbenders!" Sokka shouted "form a line along the ridge here! You!" He pointed at the Earth Army "veteran" with the broken nose.

"Names Bi" the bender said, standing and putting on his helmet.

"Ok, Bi in the center. Chung on the far left up here" The young warrior said pointing. "Ahh…" _What was the woman bender's name?_ "Huar!" _that was it!_ "on Bi's immediate left and… "_Oh forget it_ "you two on Bi's right

* * *

She raised just her eyes up out of the water to look at her pass, what she saw filled her with hate. It was the little creatures. They were everywhere now, covering all the land around her home. Their boats floated on her water. They stole her swimmers, or chased them away. She was hungry because of them, and now they were trying to block her pass into the larger hunting waters.

She swam closer, her sinuous body moving freely through the water. It had been a long time since she had been free of pain. She looked for the creature that could fly in the air, and the one that could fly on the water. They had hurt her and she feared and hated them. She had lain curled in on herself for a long time in her home until the pain had eased. Now the pain was gone to be replaced by hunger.

As she had healed the creatures had come and stolen her food. Their boats had come and stolen all of her swimmers, and now they were trying to keep her from the hunting waters to the west.

She had felt the vibrations through the water. That is what had drawn her here. They were swarming all over the northern end of the pass. Perhaps she would eat some of them. She could not remember if she had ever eaten any of them in the past. She would try a few now to see how they tasted. That would slack her hunger until she could move into new waters through the pass.

She moved closer, she did not see the two she feared, good. She rose up out of the water.

* * *

Toph could hear a lot of shouting as Sokka tried to organize the benders and "Hooky" tried to get the huge crowd of people and animals on this side of the pass to move over to the opposite slope. She could feel all the movement but there was so much of it that it was just a confused jumble to her.

Then she heard the bellowing scream of the beast and all she could feel was the freezing ice under her feet, then the cold water all around her, as the ice bridge shattered. She couldn't feel. She couldn't hear. She couldn't breathe. She was floating in a black void of cold nothingness. She was dying.

The earthbender felt someone take her hand. She grabbed it with all her might. It was Sokka's hand, she would know it from every other hand in the world. She used her other hand to grab onto it as well. She was holding on for dear life, literally.

"Come on Toph, follow me." She heard her friend's voice say.

Suddenly she was back. She could hear and feel and breathe again. Toph ran after the young warrior as he moved up the slope.

The fifteen year old stopped the two of them on the path at the crest of the ridge. He turned to Toph and said,

"Here's the plan"

But before he could explain there was another scream from the serpent that sent a shiver through all of Toph's body. The young man noticed and grabbed her, pulling her into a fierce one armed hug, since she still would not let release the two handed grip she had on his other hand.

"It's ok Toph, I've got you."

The metalbender felt the tremors quiet. Regaining her voice she told him with only a slight stammer in her voice.

"L, l , let me go 'Meathead' and tell me your 'Great Plan'".

The young girl was proud to note that she had gotten some sarcasm into her voice with this last.

"This is a great plan, we get all the benders to hit the serpent with rocks and drive him away."

"Great plan 'Meathead'! But what if it's a her."

"We just use more rocks." Was his sarcastic reply.

"Sokka I have a little problem with this plan of yours."

"What's that?"

"Well she's swimming in the water and I CAN'T SEE HER THERE!"

"That's the beauty of this plan." The teen told her. "You don't have to, all you have to do is feel the other benders, which you can do, and shoot your rocks where they are shooting theirs."

Toph hated to admit it but that sounded possible.

"Well I guess it's worth a try." She begrudged.

"Hooky" and his crew were getting the last of the mob over the ridge and onto the reverse slope, giving the benders a clear shot at the serpent.

"Well done, ah… Captain 'Hook'…."

She heard the tribesman shout. The mercenary looked surprised for a second then saluted with his swords and with a more authoritative air moved the crowd down to the safer shore.

_Captain Hook_ Yi said to himself. _I like the sound of that_ He had always wanted a nick name and now he had one. If he was a captain with a sergeant and a couple of corporals he could charge twice what he was already charging. _Yes, Captain Hook._

"Sergeant…?" Sokka said.

"Bi" the veteran said, then he added "Sir!"

"Right, Sergeant Bi take charge of this… ah…"

"Squad, sir?"

"Yes, thank you sergeant, your squad and prepare for…"

"Bombardment?"

"Yes! Prepare for Bombardment." Toph heard Sokka sigh with relief.

"Alright!" Bi started to instruct his squad.

Before he deserted Bi had never reached any rank, he had been in trouble the entire time, and hated every sergeant he had ever met. Now that he had been given responsibility, he found he liked it, and he took it very seriously.

"The first thing to remember is, don't try to do too much. Keep your missiles small. Speed and accuracy are far better than big and useless."

As Bi continued to instruct his "Troops" Sokka quietly asked Toph.

"Can I have my hand back for a second there Toph?"

The little earthbender realized that she still had a double hand death grip on her friend's hand and immediately let go.

The young man began to divest himself of his bags, water skin, and rucksack.

"That's a relief." She heard him say as a heavy object hit the ground behind him.

"Ready!" Bi Shouted as the beast started to swim towards the group on the ridge top.

Sokka placed his hands low on Toph's waist.

"I'll point you in the right direction." He told her.

The metal bender felt a surge of energy run through her at Sokka's touch. Those large hands on her waist sent a shiver through her that she only experienced when he touched her. It was a warm wonderful feeling she couldn't get enough of.

When the young water tribesman grabbed Toph and turned her towards the serpent, a little thrill ran through him. Whenever he put an arm around her or grabbed the little earthbender lately he had been feeling it. He was always surprised at how small she was. With her bulky clothes you would have thought she was thick set but when he actually touched her he found her to be rather small, but solid. _She's just a kid_ he told himself, but it did no good, he still felt the thrill every time.

The beast screamed again. Sokka stiffened at the sound, and his hands gripped the young girl tighter. The image of her sinking into the water flashed before him. He would never forget her disappearing under the surface. He had failed again to save someone he had sworn to protect. _Thank Tui for Suki, if she had not saved Toph_… That was something the fifteen year old did not want to think about. Back then the earthbender was just an obnoxious brat who didn't like non-benders. Sokka smiled to himself as he thought _Not much has changed_. But if anything had happened to her he never would have forgiven himself.

"Aim!" Bi Shouted.

With Sokka holding on to her Toph found that she recovered more quickly from the effects of the serpent's scream. She felt the other benders kick up kick-ball sized stones. She began feeling around for something appropriate to throw at a monster.

"Shoot!" Bi yelled.

All five of the benders punched out and the stones they had ready flew towards the beast. Sokka could see that the two men farthest down the line were completely off, but Chung and Huar were pretty close and that Bi, although he too missed, was the closest of all of them.

"Aim a little to the left of Bi's stone." He whispered to Toph.

The little earthbender found a stone she felt she could use. She kicked down hard and a boulder the size of a small hut leaped up out of the mountain side. She punched it out in the direction her friend had indicated. The other benders in the line stopped and stared as the boulder flew at twice the speed of even Bi's small stone, right towards the serpent.

* * *

They were throwing pebbles at her, how arrogant for such little creatures. She just ignored them, even if they hit her they wouldn't hurt. She moved closer to the land and prepared to scream at them again to make them go away when her eye caught something moving that she could not ignore. That would hurt and it was coming right for her.

* * *

"Yesssss, Yesssss. Noooo!" Sokka shouted as the beast dodged at the last instant and avoided the boulder.

"You are just amazing Toph!" The tribesman said hugging the girl. "You almost got him"

"Her!" the girl said.

"It!" the warrior compromised. Then he turned to the rest of the benders who were still standing stunned at his companion's abilities.

"Ready!" the tribesman shouted.

"Yes sir," Bi, the first to recover responded. "Ready!" He shouted, and his "Squad" began to kick up more stones. This time they were quite a bit larger than the first ones had been.

* * *

They were still throwing stones at her. She couldn't believe it. She screamed her best scream at them, but that didn't stop them. The smallest one on the end was really dangerous, that one threw real stones at her and she had to dodge them to avoid being hurt. The little creatures were too far from the water for her to reach them, but then she remembered that the high place they were on was closer to the water on the western side. She would swim through the pass and come up from behind them. Then she would eat them. She would especially enjoy eating the little one on the end.

The serpent dove down into the water and began to swim towards the pass through the mountains.

* * *

"Stop… ah… bombardment!" Sokka shouted. "It's sounded."

"What?" Toph asked.

"Dove under the water." The teen explained.

The young warrior signaled to "Hooky" to bring the mob back over the ridge. He was surprised and happy to see that the mob was no longer a mob but three groups of organized people each led by one of the mercenaries. "Captain Hook" got them moving and they were soon out of danger on the eastern side of the ridge.

"This isn't working. The monster is too quick and you can't get a good shot at it. We need to distract it somehow and let you know where to shoot."

The fifteen year old's face lit up as he said.

"I've got a plan. Toph you can see me… ah… I mean feel me, when I am just standing some place right?"

"Sure" _I can always find you_

"Great. Ok, so focus on me and when I say 'now' I want you to shoot the biggest rock you can right over my head. Ok?"

"Ok." There was an unsure tone in the earthbenders voice.

"Great!"

With that the young man began to run down the slope towards the western shore. After going about a third of the way he stopped and shouted back to his friend.

"Toph, just in case, could you make sure that Piandao gets that sword back?"

The young girl was not sure what was going on and the import of his words did not register so she just automatically responded with a

"Sure"

"Great! Thanks!" He shouted back and the blue clad boy turned and continued to run down the rocky slope.

Chung walked over to the green eyed girl and asked,

"What's going on?"

"Meathead's got a plan."

"What's the plan?" Hooky asked.

After moving the noncombatants over the ridge the newly commissioned officer had stayed on top to see what the next step was. As a captain he thought that he should be involved in any plans that were being made.

"I'm supposed to shoot a rock over 'Stupid's' head." The young girl explained.

* * *

Sokka stood on the narrow rocky beach, pulled out his new boomerang, and waited for the serpent to broach. He didn't have to wait long. Suddenly, right in front of him about one hundred paces out in the water, the monster shot up out of the sea. Almost half its length was out of the water and it towered over the young man. It screamed and he felt the blood run cold in his veins, but he could also tell that it was directing all of its attention on the benders on the ridge. It had not noticed him on the shore.

_Well here goes_. He took careful aim and threw his boomerang. The missile spun right across the beast's face, catching its attention, then came circling back to the tribesman.

* * *

"What's he doing?" Chung asked.

"How's he getting that club to come back to him?" Hooky asked."Has he got a string on it or something?"

"It's his boomerang, it always comes back." Toph explained.

Chung stiffened when he heard that. The young bender would have sworn he was frightened.

"Oh… I get it." Hooky said. "This is an old tactic. You sacrifice a small force to distract and 'fix' the enemy while your main force attacks and surprises them."

"What do you mean?" asked the girl.

"It's simple. He gets the serpent's attention, it attacks him, and while it's eating him you hit it with a rock." Hooky smiled having figured out the clever plan of his superior.

"WHAT?"

"It's a classic military tactic." Hooky said defensively.

"SOKKA YOU IDIOT, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

The teen could not quite make out what his friend was shouting but he waved jauntily up at her with his boomerang, then he turned toward the beast and threw his weapon again, this time it circled the creatures head which snapped its jaws at it but the missile was too fast. It returned to Sokka's hand. The serpent's eyes followed the weapon through its entire flight finally focusing on the young tribesman on the shore. A huge grin spread across the warrior's face. He just loved it when a plan came together.

* * *

"Out of my way!" Toph shouted pushing Chung and "Hooky" away from her.

She began to feel around for something large and heavy to throw. She was not sure if she was going to shoot it at her friend or the unseen monster. Maybe if it was big enough she could hit both of them. That would be good.

* * *

"So does your mother always dress you like a clown or is it just for special occasions." Sokka shouted to the beast.

He was feeling a little cocky so he tried a fancy throw with the boomerang. It flew straight over the beast's head then did a flip over roll and came back in the same direction he had thrown it right past the monsters face again, right back to him. He caught it one handed.

* * *

It was the flying thing again. It was the thing that had hurt her the last time. She screamed at it but like last time it just ignored her. Then she saw on the shore the one that flew on the water that had helped hurt her. It looked different a little but it had the same blue skin it had last time. She licked her teeth. She would enjoy eating this one more than she would have enjoyed the littler one that had thrown rocks at her. She swooped down on her prey.

* * *

Toph was searching for something to shoot at the beast, but she wasn't finding anything big enough. _That idiot_ she thought, _I am so going to kill him,' give my sword to Piandao', I'll give him your stupid head!_. She was scared. She couldn't see the serpent, how was she going to save Sokka if she couldn't see the monster about to eat him.

"It's going for him. Get ready" Hooky shouted.

_I need something to throw… arrrggg!_ then she realized she had the perfect thing right there. She reached out with her bending for it.

* * *

Sokka could see the monster start to make its attack. _That's a really big mouth_

"Yeah and your breath stinks too!" He shouted.

He tried to sound defiant but he was afraid it came out a little squeaky. He was distracted by the teeth that were as tall as he was coming right for him.

* * *

Chung was looking with terror and fear at the young man on the beach. The miner could not look away, mesmerized by the sight of the monster about to envelope the teenager with its jaws. Then the sound struck him. He had never heard anything like it in his life. The avalanches that were crashing down the mountain above him were minor notes in the symphony of destruction and rending earth that was the dominant theme. Then he saw the top of the mountain to his right move as it was torn away from the ridge he was standing on. It began to topple towards him.

Chung had never seen anything like this, hundreds maybe thousands of tons of rock and stone under one person's command. He had heard of such things but only in stories read to him at night out a big book in his mother's lap. This was something that only happened in legends and in songs. The top of the mountain was flying down heading right for him when the little girl suddenly leapt up and spinning in the air kicked out, and the mountain top flew, faster than an arrow, down the slope straight for the young man on the beach.

"YOU IDIOT!" Chung heard her shout above the roar.

* * *

The sea beast was just about to strike the offensive little blue thing when an object caught her eye. It could not be ignored for it was the land itself coming to crush her. She leapt completely out of the water trying to save herself. She felt it brush against her tail as she sailed up into the air.

* * *

Sokka was cringing, waiting for the jaws to close over him when something passed over his head. He looked up to see a hundred paces of solid earth pass over him. If he had wanted to he could have reached out and touched it as it passed. He smiled to himself, _Toph you are beyond comprehension_.

* * *

The mountain top crashed into the sea less than a hundred paces from the shore. As the serpent was falling from the sky it was struck by the tsunami created by the displacement of so much water. It was lifted and flung, curling and roiling, completely out of control, far out into the bordering sea. It was never seen in the vicinity of the Serpent's Pass again.

* * *

The water tribesman began to cheer and dance on the shore, brandishing his boomerang high above his head, as the mass of earth hit the water. He became a little less enthusiastic in his celebration when he noticed the wave, which was about ten times taller than he was, heading for the shore he was standing on. He turned and ran for the hills.

* * *

Toph stood on the ridge line panting with the effort she had just expended. Everyone was quiet, staring at her. Most could not believe what they had seen. Some never would be able to believe it. Then Captain "Hook" began to cheer, which was soon followed by everyone on the small peninsula joining in. People came running up the slope to slap her back, or just to touch her, to cheer or just to get a good look at her.

* * *

Chung had fallen to his knees he was so overcome. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and looked to see that Liung was beside him. His wife helped him up and amid all the shouting and cheering he looked into her face and said.

"It's them. 'The Blind Queen' and 'The Dark King'. They're real! I never believed they were real but they are and we are here with them."

He was answered by a shocked and frightened look on his wife's face. Then she shook her head saying.

"It can't be, it's just a story they don't really exist, and even if they did they wouldn't be with people like us." She laughed at her husband's wild fantasy.

* * *

Toph searched through all the footsteps on the mountain for the one set she would be able to identify anywhere and anytime. There were so many people around her cheering and shouting and touching her and the mountain was still rebounding from all the violence done to it that she was having trouble "seeing" clearly. She could not find him, she searched and searched and could not find him. She was about to scream at everyone to stop moving when a very wet set of arms came around her waist and a breathless voice said in her ear.

"Toph! You saved me. My hero!" Then there was something touching her cheek and a loud "Muwa"

"PUT ME DOWN!" She screamed.

The tribesman did as he was commanded, but he still held onto her shoulders. Toph's fist lashed out striking him in the chest. She hit him with all her might. She wanted to hurt him.

"YOU IDIOT!" She shouted into his face. "What were you thinking? 'Give my sword to Piandao'. What was that? How can you be so stupid?" she punched him again, as hard as she could.

"Toph! That hurts." He told her.

"GOOD!" She shouted hitting him again. "You stupid…."

"Fuck?" Hooky offered

"FUCK!" she screamed hitting him again and again and again emphasizing each word with a punch.

"FUCK!...,FUCK!...,FUCK!"

"I'm sorry Toph, I didn't realize you'd be upset."

"Upset! I thought you were dead you stupid fuck."

Sokka could see that she had tears in her eyes as she continued.

"If you ever do anything like that again and you survive, I swear by Oma and Shu, I'll kill you myself. I'll beat you to death with rock. You idiot!"

"I'm sorry." Was all the young man could think to say, so he just kept repeating it over and over, accepting each punch without defending himself.

The crowd around the two young people had been quiet as the confrontation had gone on. Then Liung came up behind the little earthbender and gently put her hands on Toph's shoulders to quiet her. The young girl stopped and stood panting, with tears glistening in her eyes.

"There's a good girl." Liung said stroking her back.

"There's a good wife" Chung said.

"OK, shows over." Captain Hook said. "Nobody told you to stop working we have a tunnel to bend let's get to it."

The crowd began to disperse. Liung moved Toph away down the slope.

"I'm really sorry Toph." Sokka said to her retreating back.

Toph stopped, then raised her foot. The young man knew that move. He brought his feet together and bent his knees. Toph's foot dropped, and he felt the familiar tremble under his feet as he was launched by an earth pillar high into the air.

_At least I don't have my back pack on_ he told himself as he looked for a good place to land.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Comments: Just want to thank every one for reading this. I want to thank all those who have put this story or me on their alerts or in their favs. I hope it is still meeting your expectations.

Thanks to all the reviewers you guys keep me going, especially Mithendel who has spent so much time helping me with just learning how to write.

I would like to give a very special thank you to Vox Populi, who has been doing a tremendous amount of work reviewing and editing the earlier chapters. I am hoping to be able to update them this weekend.

Not much to say about this update, just wanted Toph to have a chance to use her stuff. Hope this reads ok.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	10. Chapter 10

I'll Walk You Home pt 10

Chapter 5

pt.1

A Walk in the Woods

* * *

It took about two hours to bend the tunnel. It could have been done much faster but, somehow, it was decided to add some extras. Extras such as terraced steps down the inclines with ramps cut for cart wheels, or raising the height so you could ride an Ostrich-Horse through it, and various decorations. Everyone on the peninsula took part in some way, everyone except Toph.

The families gathered on the large flat area created by Toph and set up day camps. Fires were started and it turned into a picnic/lunch break. The Benders created the tunnel and volunteers brought them food and water, or held glow crystals for them.

Even the children got involved, one of the returning refugees was a teacher who donated colored chalk to the enterprise and the young artists created a mural of Toph's victory over the serpent on the wall of the entrance. They all claimed that Sokka was the hardest to draw.

The young warrior was very busy during the whole construction process. He was always in demand for consultations with the benders as they built the tunnel. He was able to delegate some of the crowd control obligations to "Captain Hook" and "Sergeant Bi" but everyone really wanted to talk to the fifteen year old water tribesman who had beaten the mercenaries, had planned the battle against the Great Serpent, had risked his life to win the battle, and who's idea the tunnel had been in the first place.

Sokka seemed to be in six places at once as he ran about the site, even crossing over to the opposite shore at one point. He handled the questions, made suggestions, and asked questions of his own. He kept the project on track and moving, and was able to imbue in everyone a feeling of accomplishment and, truth be told, a sense of fun.

As it neared completion the young warrior finally had a chance to search out his friend.

* * *

Toph was sitting off to the side of the impromptu picnic area away from all the other people. Liung was still with her but everyone one else had avoided the young girl. The tears had been wiped from her face and she was calm now.

The young earthbender was playing with her space-earth arm band. She wasn't "bending" it. She was just fiddling with it in her two hands. The bracelet was her favorite thing in the whole world and just having it in her hands had always helped her whenever she was upset.

"Husbands!" Liung finally said in an exasperated tone.

"Yeah." The younger girl replied.

Toph had realized early on that Liung thought that the metalbender and water tribesman were married. At first the earthbender had found it funny and played along with it as a joke, but deep down in her mind there was a little thought running around singing,

_Sokka and Toph are married,_

_Sokka and Toph are married_

Over and over again, which she rather enjoyed. _Stop that!_ She told the thought, but it didn't seem to do any good. The thought was happily dancing around singing and throwing flowers in the air no matter how much Toph's good sense glared at it.

"You would think he would be more careful." Liung's voice pulled the younger girl out of her reverie. "Considering your condition and all."

"Condition?"

"Well with the baby and all."

"Baby?"

Liung noticed a certain amount of uncertainty and possibly fear in the girl's voice at this last.

"Oh… weren't we supposed to know?"

"Know what?" The earthbender asked, worry creeping into her voice.

"That you two are pregnant?"

"…."

Toph tried to think of something to say but was stymied by the thoughts flying through her brain at that moment. _Pregnant, I can't be pregnant… can I?_ She couldn't be. Could she? She was not really sure about the whole pregnancy thing. She most definitely did not still believe in the whole ibex-stork story she was told when she was little. Her mother had explained the real story to her just last year, but Mom had been really sparse on the technical details. Toph knew that boys were involved in some way, she was sure of that much.

_I'd know if I was._ The little earthbender told herself. But then a doubt creeped in, _Wouldn't I? Liung is older and married. She has to know more about this than I do. Maybe she has spotted something that I didn't notice._ This was getting a little scary. Toph knew from her mother that boys were involved and marriage, yes she definitely remembered that her mother emphasized that marriage was necessary to be pregnant.

_Toph and Sokka are married_

_Stop that!_ Now where was she? OK, yes boys and marriage were necessary. What else? Her mother had been very vague about the rest of it, but from the way her mom talked about it, it was unpleasant and icky. Very icky! _Icky? Icky? Icky?_ No she could not remember doing anything icky with a boy. Muddy? Oh yeah!. Mean? Sure! But not icky. No, Toph finally decided, she could not be pregnant. She wondered where Liung was getting all these strange ideas.

"I'm not pregnant!" The younger girl stated with confidence.

"Oh… Sorry" Liung blushed. "I thought I had heard, well never mind. Just wishful thinking on my part I guess."

The young wife was actually relieved that a girl so young was not expecting, though she herself had wanted a child for so long now that her relief was toned with a little regret.

"And we're not married." The younger girl said.

_Toph and Sokka are married!_ The little thought mournfully sang quietly in Toph's mind.

"Oh? So you are eloping? Your parents didn't understand did they? Him being water tribe."

"Oh fuck yeah! My parents won't… don't, don't understand at all."

The older girl was still shocked by the younger one's use of such a crude word. Tentatively she asked,

"You do know what that word means, right?"

"No, but it is a great word, what does it mean?"

"Well it means… well it describes… well it… ah… it's the act of… ah… making babies, actually."

"Oh…" Toph said, then she thought. _That must be the icky, icky, icky part._

"Yes, and normally you should only use it when you are very, very, frustrated or angry. It is sort of for special occasions only."

"Well fuck!" The blind girl said, disappointment evident in her tone. She really liked that word and had planned to use it whenever she could.

Sokka, his timing impeccable as always, chose that moment to approach the two girls and ask his friend,

"Can we talk?"

Liung taking her cue stood and walked away towards the main group which was gathering by the tunnel entrance. Sokka sat down beside his friend and waited. Finally he said,

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"Stop saying that!" Toph told him sharply, "I wasn't upset, I was just surprised." She turned away from him and brushed her hair over her ears.

"Why would I care if anything happened to you." She said slipping the black armband back onto her left bicep.

"Exactly!" The young man replied. "And thanks for saving my life… again."

With this last, the boy reached out and began to scratch the girl's back.

"Grrulgg." The girl said in response.

The boy took this as a good sign and used both hands to scratch up and down her back.

"They've finished with the tunnel, and they want to have a little opening ceremony, with you as the guest of honor."

"Arrlllggg?" Was her response.

The boy moved up closer behind her and turned the back scratch into a back rub, starting at the shoulders and working his way down.

"You feel a little tense, everything ok?" He asked.

"Finnne….aaaahhhhhh." she answered.

Sokka was really good at giving back rubs. Toph had never had one from him before, and she was amazed at how it felt. He started by massaging her shoulders, his long fingers finding all the spots where she hid her tension, even the little spots just under her collar bones. His thumbs then worked down on either side of her spine, while his fingers worked the muscles over her shoulder blades. His hands continued to move lower till they were on her waist, then to her lower spine, with his fingers on her hips. After about ten minutes he finished with another scratching session up and down her back.

"We should probably head over." He suggested.

Toph wiped the moisture from her chin. _Was I drooling?_

"I have to go pee." She said as she stood up.

"Ok, I'll wait here for you." The boy said standing. Then before she moved away he added,

"Toph, I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that right?"

"Yeah, I know. I gotta go pee."

* * *

When Toph returned she could feel the young man waiting for her. He had put on all his gear and was holding her bed roll for her. She shouldered her bindle and they proceeded to the entrance of the new tunnel.

The dedication ceremony was attended by everyone in the pass, including a number of people who had arrived during the course of the construction. The young children described the mural they had chalked to Toph since she couldn't see it. There were speeches and Sokka was asked to speak.

Toph could tell her friend was once again panicked by the prospect of public speaking, so she took his hand and told him,

"Fuck them, just talk to me."

Liung, who was standing near by clucked her tongue at the obscenity. Toph turned to her, defending her choice of words with,

"You said it was for special occasions. Well this is a special occasion."

Sokka laughed, and then in a loud voice thanked everyone who worked on the project.

Huar, the woman bender, having worked construction in the past, and having some skill, had used her bending to carve a legend over the Northern entrance to the tunnel which read,

The Toph/Sokka Tunnel

(Later travelers would shorten the name of the tunnel by combining the two personal names. No one was ever sure how the combined name should be pronounced though.)

The young couple then led the way through to the other side.

* * *

The procession of travelers wound their way through the pass. After only a few hours Sokka pulled Toph off to the side and suggested,

"Why don't we camp here, where we did last time. By the time we get out of the pass any camping area, like the falls, will be full of people and very crowded. It will be more comfortable and quiet here."

Toph saw the logic of this and the two moved off to the flat area and set up camp. Liung and Chung who had been walking along with them also pulled out of the column and set up camp a short distance from the younger pair.

Sokka spent the late afternoon changing the wrapping on his sword so "Spring Rain" would still be protected but the swordsman would now be able to draw it whenever he needed it.

He spent the rest of the time writing letters. The back of one of the letters contained designs for some mechanical device. Chung came over to offer to share dinner with the two, and seeing the designs asked,

"What are those?"

"It's a design for a pump I thought they could use in the tunnel. With the rains coming the passage will fill up with water, so a pump is going to have to be installed, and they will need a power source for the pump. So this paddle wheel could be set up in the pass and the tides moving through will spin the wheel and run the pump."

"My sister and our friend are on the Ruling Council so I am writing to them to have the council install the pump and set up a guard on the tunnel to prevent someone from collecting tolls. You know someone will if they are not prevented. Of course the council will collect a toll to pay for the soldiers, but there is nothing I can do about that."

Chung was impressed. This "boy" had thought of everything, and then had taken action. The young miner really had to make some changes in his life, not just accept what came but start being more like the young water tribesman.

Toph napped most of the afternoon, catching up on the sleep she had lost for the last few weeks.

* * *

Around sunset they ate a simple dinner around the camp fire. As they finished their supper, the last of the travelers moved through the pass, and the two couples were left alone on the heights.

Dinner was fun. Sokka told jokes and funny stories, Toph made snide remarks and hit the young boy in the arm. Eventually the married couple and the two friends bid each other good night and moved to their respective camps to bed down for the night.

* * *

As they lay side by side, Liung asked her husband,

"So do you still think they are the 'Dark One' and the 'Blind Bride' from the stories?"

"Well, he does have a magic club that comes back to him every time he throws it. And he has that sword, which he keeps covered up. Why would you carry a fancy sword but keep it covered up unless you were trying to hide it for some reason?"

"How do you know it is fancy?"

"I got a glimpse of the scabbard when he was working on the cover. Besides, have you seen her eyes? Have you ever even heard of bending like that, let alone seen it? She has to be the 'Blind Queen'".

"I don't know where you get these crazy ideas. He's just a teenager, do you really think he is the personification of evil? Don't be silly! And, yes she is blind and a powerful bender, the most powerful I've ever seen, but she is just a young girl, and she certainly doesn't act like any queen I've ever heard of."

"But it all fits." Chung said, as he rolled onto his side to look at his wife.

"Oh come on." His wife replied, "Heroes from songs and stories don't travel and camp with people like us. They spend all their time with great ladies and lords."

"What do you mean people like us." The miner smiled at her.

He planted his elbow on the ground and propped his head up onto his hand so he could see her face. He continued his argument with,

"Like Lady Liung? Hand maiden to the 'Blind Queen'".

"I'm no maiden." His wife smiled up at him. "And who is this 'Chung the Miner' fellow? Does that mean I am Mrs. The Miner?"

"I thought it sounded better than Chung Mi Loo. I may keep it."

He moved himself closer to his wife and placed his free hand on her stomach. Liung grinned up into her husband's face, and moved her hand to his cheek.

"You did a great job today." She told him, "I was very proud of you."

"Very?" He asked stroking her side.

Liung shifted her hip up against him, then raised her face to his and told him,

"Very, very."

She moved her lips onto his to illustrate just how proud she was. Chung moved his hand from her side up onto her stomach, which he began to gently rub through her robe. He shifted his leg over in-between hers as he moved his head down for another kiss.

"So," She asked when he broke the kiss, "Will our children be 'Little The Miners'?"

"Maybe."

Somehow his hand had found its way inside her robe. Her lips found his again.

"Let's find out" She told him.

She pulled his head down to hers and this kiss became much deeper and was followed by some deep breaths. He began to kiss his way down her neck, while his hand moved inside her robe up to her breast.

"Should I bend an earth tent?" He asked her, between kisses.

"I'd rather look at the night sky. It's much more interesting then the ceiling of an earth tent." She answered breathlessly.

The young wife began to rub her hip against him. She could feel his growing interest in the night's activities.

"It's nice to have you back." She breathed into his ear.

"Anything for the 'Hand Maiden to the Blind Queen'." He said.

"And for 'Chung the Miner' tunnel master of the 'Dark King'."

Liung reached down and released the ties on her robe, then she untied her chest band for him. Chung had never been very good with knots.

His hand moved up and pulled down the band of cloth revealing the treasure that his mouth and tongue eagerly sought. She sighed with pleasure.

* * *

Toph was having a hard time sleeping since she had been napping earlier. She could hear Sokka's snores, he lay only about an arms length away from her. She realized, as she lay there, that she had missed the young man's snores. During the war the group had slept in one camp, and Toph usually slept near Sokka. But for the last month and a half they had been sleeping in separate rooms. Her friend's snores and restless movements now comforted her.

The young girl lay on her blanket and listened smiling to herself. Then she heard something she had not heard before coming from the other camp. She thought it sounded a little like kissing but much, much wetter and very rhythmic. She also heard some sighs, moans, and grunts. She listened for a moment then she flicked a pebble off of Sokka's forehead to wake him up and make sure that everything was all right with their new friends.

The young warrior grabbed his war club and sat up on his sleeping mat, looking around asking,

"What? What?"

"Shhhh." Was the earthbenders reply.

"What?" He whispered as he turned towards her in the darkness.

"What's that noise?" She asked him

Sokka lay down and rolled over onto his stomach. He lay that way for a moment listening then he silently crawled over to his friend so that their faces where only a few centimeters apart. He lifted himself up on his arms and looked over Toph in the direction of the noise, then he lay back down again. He couldn't see much, the new moon was only a week old at this point, so the night was quite dark. But he knew what was happening in the neighboring camp. Now he had to decide just what he was going to tell his younger friend.

"It's just Liung and Chung" he told her.

"Are they ok?" She asked.

"Their fine, their just _What?_... Their fine, go to sleep."

"Come on Snoozles, what's going on over there."

_Well Gran Gran had explained it all to me by her age, maybe even younger._

Sokka took a breath and finally said,

"Well their doing 'it'."

"What do you mean 'it'?"

"You know, 'it'. The big 'it'. Capital I, capital T."

"Snoozles!" Even though she was whispering Toph was able to show her frustration with her friend's explanation.

"Their making a baby." He whispered to her.

A large grin spread across the 'Blind Bandits' face. She moved a little closer to the young man and whispered,

"You mean their fucking?"

"Is that what that means?" He whispered back.

"That's what Liung told me it meant."

Sokka, even in the dim light, noticed that Toph was spreading her hands onto the earth in front of her. The young warrior raised an eyebrow and then moved his own hands, pushing them under the earthbenders, breaking her contact with her element.

"Don't do that, it's rude." He whispered, holding her hands.

"What?" she whispered innocently.

"You know exactly 'what'."

"Why does it sound so wet?" She asked.

"That means Liung is enjoying it. 'Wetter is better'."

Sokka listened for a few seconds and then whispered to his friend,

"Their almost finished. Just ignore them and go to sleep."

"How can you tell?"

"Just listen for a bit they'll get faster and faster then it will stop and it will be all over." He quietly explained.

Toph lay facing her friend, holding his hands. She listened and heard the rhythm increase, with more gasping, sighing, and moaning. She felt her own heart start to beat faster and faster. She felt a heat growing inside her spreading from her chest into her breasts and down into her center. She didn't know if it was Sokka being so close to her, or the sounds, or her knowledge of what the sounds meant, or everything all together but the heat kept growing inside her.

Then the sounds stopped, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath for a few seconds. Then she heard someone gasping for air, then it was two people, then there was quiet laughter and giggling, then kissing, then quiet talking.

"Go to sleep." Sokka suggested.

He turned his head to the side and laid it on the ground, but he held onto her hands. What he had not noticed in the darkness was that the small earthbender had her toes firmly rooted in the earth the entire time.

Toph finally laid her own head on the ground and soon she too was asleep.

* * *

Liung and Chung woke well after the sun was up. They were still in each others arms and they woke together. They just lay there a while smiling at each other. Eventually the two noticed movement in the small clearing the two couples had set up camp in. On one side was the blind girl going through her earthbending forms. On the other was the boy who appeared to be doing some form of dance with fans.

There was quite a bit of scrambling under the blanket as clothes were adjusted or found and put back on. Finally the married pair got up and called,

"Good morning."

to the other couple. Liung was going to offer to make breakfast, but she noticed a wok with good smells coming from it already on the fire.

* * *

The four of them sat down to Sokka's breakfast. Toph asked Liung,

"Sleep well last night?"

Liung looked at the little earthbender and told her,

"Very well, actually. I haven't slept that well in years. Though I wouldn't mind a softer bed in the future."

Chung blushed and did not meet Sokka's eyes.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Comments: Sorry I am so late in getting this up for everyone. I will try to be more timely with my future chapters, though just to warn you I will be off line for about two weeks starting at the end of June.

Also just to let you know this is about as lemony as this story will get. Nothing against lemons it is just that I am not planning any for this story and I didn't want the readers to be disappointed.

I would like to thank everyone for reading, and especially everyone who has added me to their alerts and favorites. A very big thank you to those who have reviewed the story. The reviews are a real boost to my writing.

Also a big thank you to **Vox Populi** for all his work on the early chapters. He is now publishing his own work, please go check them out.

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	11. Chapter 11

I'll Walk You Home pt 11

Chapter 5

pt.2

A Walk in the Woods

It was late morning when the four travelers finally reached the waterfall where, months before, the "Gaang" had left the desert on their journey to Ba Sing Se. The area around the falls was covered with the remnants of hundreds of camp sites, and was littered with debris from the tens of thousands of soldiers and travelers who had moved through on their way to somewhere else.

Sokka could see about two dozen people, some obviously families, playing in the pool at the base of the falls. The bathers where having a good time but it just seemed crowded and not very inviting to the young man, who remembered a time when it had just been the four of them recovering from that terrible journey from the library.

The tribesman and the little earthbender bid Liung and Chung farewell. The married couple was taking the main road to Omashu.

As they were saying goodbye Sokka had a thought and began making notes in his little book. Chung and Liung looked at each other for a possible explanation, they had never seen a book full of blank pages, nor a writing implement like Sokka's before. When you wrote it required an ink block, water, and a brush, not to mention a writing desk to put it all on.

"What's that?" Chung finally asked.

"Oh, nothing" The teen replied, "I was just thinking about your trip to Omashu and I had an idea for a transportation system, so I was making a note so I don't forget."

"He does that all the time." The young earthbender explained.

"What are you writing with?" Liung asked.

"This?" Sokka held up his paper wrapped piece of charcoal. "This is my charcoal pen."

"He spends hours grinding up a piece of charcoal, and then he glues it all back together again." Toph explained, "Then he glues a piece of paper around it. It makes no sense to me."

"It's the only way to get a consistent strength and texture to the charcoal and the paper holds it together and keeps your hands clean." The boy explained, as he continued to write his idea down.

"What's your idea?" Chung asked.

"Well the Fire Army has this machine." He turned to his companion for support asking, "Remember that time that Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee were chasing us, and they had that machine that was like a chain?"

"Yeah."

Sokka turned to the married couple and explained,

"It was an armored, steam powered machine, that had wagons, or carts attached like a chain to it. Well it was really fast, it kept up with Appa, until we got to the mountains. So I was thinking if you built a civilian version, without all the armor, it would be a lot more efficient, and you could have cars for passengers attached to it, and if you built a special road for it, the machine could carry maybe one or even two hundred people and all their stuff, really quickly to Omashu or wherever. You could probably cut the travel time down to one quarter or even less for a long trip."

The young man was now writing furiously in his "Note" book.

"You would have to have stopping places and fuel and water places on the road. It would be a big investment in both time and money but if you could set it up it would increase the ease and speed of travel and bring everybody closer together."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Chung said.

"No one ever does." Toph said with a bemused tone. Then she told their two new friends, "Just smile and say OK, and don't ask any questions or you will be here all day and still not know what he is talking about."

"Hey! This is a good idea."

"Ok." The metalbender said with a big smile.

Liung and Chung laughed. Then they both bowed to the young couple who had become their friends in such a short time. Sokka put away his book and "pen" and he and Toph bowed in turn.

"May you find peace and happiness on your journey." The miner said.

"What fun would that be?" the young girl asked, with a smirk.

"May you find good hunting, good family, and good friends." The water tribesman said.

As the married pair moved off to the main road, which was as fouled as the main road out of the city had been, Liung looked back at the younger pair. She tugged at her husband's arm,

"Look at this." She told him.

Chung turned to see the young warrior, his pack now slung across his chest, squatting down in front of his smaller companion. The young girl hopped up onto the boy's back, who then stood and the two, now joined as one, proceeded to cross the road.

"Sure they're not a couple?" The miner asked his wife.

"Oh they're a couple alright." She smiled. Then she added, "They're just not married yet, obviously since he is carrying her after all."

Chung raised an eyebrow at this then bent down and scooped his young wife up onto his shoulder. Liung let out a squawk of surprise at suddenly being hoisted up into the air. She made a desperate grab for all her bags and belongings that started to fall off of her.

"You're an idiot!" She proclaimed.

"And you married me, so what does that make you?" was his reply.

"Very lucky!" she said with a smile. "Just be careful, you're going to hurt your back."

"Not me." He told her. Then in a bass voice he sang out, "I'm 'Chung the Miner'."

This caused the heads of the travelers around them to turn in the married couple's direction. Liung gave a little wave and said,

"I'm 'Mrs. The Miner'."

"And don't you forget it." Her husband told her.

Then he turned his head and kissed her hip which was by his ear.

* * *

Toph rode on Sokka's back. Her hands, clasped onto the young man's chest, felt the firm muscles under his robe. Her breasts and stomach pressed against his back could feel the strong muscles moving underneath her. Her face was held tightly up to the side of his face. His pony tail (sorry, wolf tail) tickled her ear and neck. Yes when the blind earthbender was riding piggyback on the water tribesman she could not feel the world around her, but it had its compensations.

* * *

Lunch for the two was in a sparse forest in the foot hills. They had left the main road far behind and were sitting by the side of the small trail they were following to the ancient road created by the long forgotten empire that once ruled the Earth Kingdom. Sokka had his hand copied version of the ages old map he had found in the university library out and was studying it.

"This 'Roaming Empire' must have really been something in its hay day." He finally pronounced.

"Whose empire?" Toph asked around the cha siu bao she was finishing.

"The 'Roamers'." The young man replied. "I thought that would be a better name than the 'Toe Nomads'".

"I don't know, I kinda like 'Toe Nomads' myself"

"'Toe Nomad Empire' doesn't roll off the tongue like 'Roamer Empire'."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"Anyway, this road system they built was just amazing. When we start across the desert it should be a lot easier than last time." The boy said rolling up the map and putting it away.

"That I won't mind."

* * *

They had been walking for about an hour when Toph asked,

"Will all the main roads be as nasty as the ones around Ba Sing Se?"

"Probably." The boy replied, "Well at least the ones that have had armies moving over them."

He hitched his hands under his pack to take some of the weight off of his shoulders. Then he added thoughtfully,

"Most armies are made up of young guys. Were you ever in the 'boys' room' back at the house?"

"Yeah… it was pretty bad, you two didn't put anything away."

"Well imagine that times like twenty or thirty thousand and you get an idea of what an army is like. Even if they are not fighting anyone they still really make a mess of anyplace they pass through, let alone camp in. You never want an army in your territory even if it is your own and it is a time of peace."

"Add to that all the civilian traffic and you have a terrible mess. Farther from the cities it could be even worse as people abandon more and more stuff that they can't carry along."

"If you can't carry it why did you bring it with you to start with?" The young earthbender asked.

"Well when you start out you don't know how tough it is going to be and you have all this stuff so you try to bring it with you. After a while you realize that you can't haul it around anymore and you just have to toss it away."

"Back home," the tribesman continued, "We had to move all the time. All the food is in the sea, so we had to live along the coast. Every summer when the ice melted we had to move closer to the pole, every winter when the ice froze again we had to move back towards the sea to stay along the coast."

"You know," he added thoughtfully, "Sozin or whoever was in charge at the start of the war was really smart. The first thing the Fire Nation did was kill all our dogs."

"Why'd they kill your pets?" Toph asked, "That makes no sense."

"These dogs were not pets. They were our only source of transportation. The dogs were used to pull our sleds. With no dogs we had to pull the sleds ourselves, which slowed us down, and made it a lot easier to catch us and take our waterbenders. There haven't been any dogs in the Southern Tribe for a century."

"You had to pull everything around yourself?" The young girl had not heard this story before.

"Yeah," The young man said without any special emphasis. It was just the way things were as far as he knew.

"As soon as I could walk, Mom would tie a piece of line around me and tie the other end around her waist. That way, as she and Gran Gran pulled the woman's sled, I could keep up and not wander off and get lost. 'Keep up or die'."

"Have you ever noticed" the young girl observed, "All your little sayings end in 'die'."

"Not all of them." Sokka replied defensively.

"'Sleep alone die alone', 'Keep up or die'" Toph said.

"'Wetter is better'" The young man offered.

The young girl blushed at the memory, not of the phrase but from the circumstances of last night when she first heard it.

The tribesman filled the silence that followed his last remark with,

"I was always jealous of Katara, since she got to ride in the sled longer than I did. When sis could walk Mom tied her to me and I had to make sure she kept up. Eventually when I got old enough, I helped Dad pull the man's sled, and finally Katara helped Gran Gran and Mom pull the woman's sled. Then Mom was gone and it was just Katara and Gran Gran, then Dad left and it was just me on the man's sled. We had to leave stuff on the ice a lot. My big worry recently was when we would have to leave Gran Gran on the ice."

"You were going to leave your grandmother to die on the ice?" Toph was horrified at the prospect.

"Well if she couldn't keep up, there would be nothing else to do. Katara and I weren't strong enough to haul a sled with everything we needed and Gran Gran too."

"'Keep up or die'" the girl said sadly.

"Well yeah" the boy answered defensively.

* * *

The two were silent for a time. Eventually, to fill the void, the young man said,

"Don't ever tell Katara, but I was always jealous of her. Mom used to carry me around on her back under her parka, that's the way moms do it in the tribe, but as soon as 'Little Sister' came along I had to learn how to walk 'cause Mom couldn't carry both of us. It always seemed that I had to grow up fast because of sis."

The boy was thoughtful for a second then he said,

"Woah…" as if he had just realized something.

"What?" Toph asked.

The earthbender had never heard any of these stories and was truly curious as to the young man's life before she had met him. She did not realize just how hard a life the brother and sister had had.

"Well… I just remembered something from way back." The hunter said. "I must have been really young. Like two or something. Anyway Mom was breast feeding sis."

He gestured with his hands mimicking holding a baby up to his chest.

"And I wanted her to feed me. And she told me no, she only had enough for Katara, and I got really mad, and I thought, the next chance I had, I was going to put Katara out on the ice and get rid of her. Then I would have Mom all to myself."

As soon as he said it an image of Suki, bare breasted, flashed through his mind, then it turned into an image of Toph, at the time they had gone to the river in Ba Sing Se recently, and she was in just her breast wrap and shorts, and it was wet and _Woah…where did that come from_ he asked himself. He shook his head to clear the images from his mind.

"So you thought about killing your sister?" Toph asked.

"Yeah… I guess I did." The boy said thoughtfully. "I never did anything of course. Funny I never remembered that until now."

"I was a real jerk to her most of the time." The boy went on, "Mom would tie us together so Katara wouldn't get lost when we went out to play and Mom was busy."

An image flashed through his mind of his very little sister furious to tears, with her little mittened hands clenched, stamping her feet, asking why she had to play her stupid brother's games, when it was his turn to play her game.

"Katara was always making these little snow families, I swear she is going to end up having a dozen kids when she gets married, and I would stomp all over them, or throw snowballs at her. I was a terrible older brother."

The young earthbender heard the regret in his voice as he confessed.

"Then when they found out she was a water bender, I was even more jealous."

Sokka turned to Toph and shaking his finger at her in a deep voice mimicking his father said,

"Your sister is the most important person in the tribe now. You have to take care of her. The whole future of the tribe depends on her."

"Well I was a real jerk after that." the boy said this last in his own voice.

"I just hope I can make it up to her someday and that she will forgive me. Toph, you can never tell Katara I said any of this." He told his friend.

"So did your Mom ever feed you after that?" Toph asked him.

Toph was not too sure about the whole breast feeding thing. Her mom had not explained too much about what breasts did other than that Toph's would get bigger as she got older. Then she remembered when the woman gave birth the last time they went through the pass. She held the child to her chest a lot, and the earthbender realized the mother was feeding her baby when she was doing that.

"She never breast fed me again, but of course she fed me, the way moms do with kids too young to chew their meat."

"What do you mean?"

"Well your mom chews the food for you and then puts it in your mouth so you can swallow it."

"Wait, your mom shoves a bunch of chewed up food into your mouth?" The girl asked in astonishment.

"She doesn't shove it. She does it like this."

Sokka reached out and took the young girl's shoulder to stop and turn her towards him. Toph could feel the contact coming and tried to prepare herself for it but any time the young man made contact it always caused her breath to catch in her throat and her heart to skip a beat. She loved the contact but hated her reaction to it. She felt so out of control.

The warrior slid his left hand along her shoulder, under her long pony tail, to the back of her neck. The movement sent sparks cascading down into her chest. Her breast binder suddenly felt too small and her stomach did a complete flip. He then gently tilted her head back slightly as his right hand touched her cheek. The gentle touch of his calloused finger tips on her face sent a water fall of fire down into her chest and the young girl's heart just quit out right and took up residence in the top of her throat.

She felt the shadow of his head cover her face as her bending told her he was leaning down to her.

"She would open your mouth."

His fingers stroked her cheek and she opened her mouth. He stroked again saying,

"A little wider."

She complied, her eyes growing wider as well.

"Then she would cover your mouth with her own." She felt his warm breath against her face, as his mouth moved closer to her own.

"And she would push the food into your mouth with her tongue."

Her bending told her that his mouth was mere millimeters from her own, then, he stood up. The hand on her face was gone. The one on her neck was again on her shoulder, and with a little nudge they were walking down the trail again.

After a few steps she realized that her mouth was still open and she clamped it shut. After that she decided she should probably start breathing again and inhaled some air, which caused her heart to settle down into her chest and to start beating again, far too vigorously in Toph's opinion. She lowered her face toward the ground and brushed her bangs to try and hide the crimson blush that was radiating from her shoulders up.

Just to show that Sokka's demonstration had no effect on her she told him,

"Gross."

Though it came out in a rather quiet, throaty voice.

* * *

Eventually Sokka asked the earthbender,

"So did your mom carry you around on her back when you were little?"

"No." Toph said with a laugh.

The thought of her mother carrying her in anyway was just ridiculous.

"So how did you get around when you were little?"

"I don't know, I was too young to remember. I guess my wet nurse carried me around.'

"What's a 'wet nurse'?" The boy asked.

"She's a servant that takes care of you when you are little. My main servant was Madame Wang."

"What was her personal name?"

"She never told me her personal name, she just told me to call her Madame Wang. At night Madame Hong took over in case I needed something."

"What if you had to get up at night to pee or something?" he asked.

"I would just say 'I have to pee' and Madame Hong would get me up, dress me, and take me to the potty."

"Madame Wang has been my personal servant for years. She would bathe me and dress me in the mornings, during the day she would teach me how to walk properly and how to talk properly. Meals would be served to us in my room and she taught me how to hold and use my chop sticks and how to arrange the bowls of food and eat from them. Stuff like that. Whenever I needed to go someplace in the house she would take me, but we spent almost every day in my room. Then in the afternoon she would undress me and bathe me and get me ready for bed. Then she would leave and Madame Hong would take over, sitting in a chair by my bed in case I needed anything during the night."

"So you must have had good food, being rich and all." The young man observed.

"I guess." She told him. "I had to eat whatever was given to me. I wasn't allowed to pass up any dish."

"What if you didn't like what they gave you?" He asked.

"Not allowed!" The young girl said in a stern voice. She continued in the same voice,

"This is not about what you like and don't like this is about proper behavior. You will eat whatever is given to you and you will express delight in it. You will not be some spoiled, rude child."

Sokka laughed at this last.

"Oh that must have caused some problems." He said.

"Oh we had some real fights. She was not allowed to beat me, so the day after our first 'argument'." She put special emphasis on the word. "Madame Wang brought a young girl into my room and had her sit in a chair in the corner, and the first time I gave her any trouble she called the girl over to her."

"Girl come here and drop your pants!" Toph said in her Madame Wang voice.

"Then I heard the sound of something cutting the air with a loud thwack at the end of it, and a cry of pain from the girl. I'm not sure but I think she was about my age, maybe four or five at the time. Well after about three thwacks the other girl was crying and begging Madame Wang to stop but good old Madame Wang gave her ten good ones."

The young earthbender was quiet for a moment remembering.

"Wait a minute, Madame Wang was not allowed to hit you so she was punishing this other girl who had done nothing wrong instead."

"I think my parents paid her parents to have her as my 'Whipping Girl'. Madame Wang explained that anytime I was bad that the other girl would be whipped. Then she made me feel the switch she was beating the girl with and she made me feel the welts on her bare bottom and thighs. I never learned the girl's name. Madame Wang just called her girl, and we were not allowed to talk to one another."

"Poor kid." The tribesman observed.

"That was the name I called her, 'Poor Girl'. So anyway after about the third time Madame Wang whipped the little girl that day, 'Poor Girl' was a real mess, crying all the time, and each time I had to feel the welts on her, I finally gave up and started to behave. The sound of her whimpering was driving me crazy. I just felt so helpless."

"About once a week my mother would come in and I would perform for her to show her what I had learned. What new words, or how to bow properly, or whatever. If Mom was not satisfied then 'Poor Girl' was beaten. So I always tried to make Mommy happy."

"About once a month Madame Wang would dress me up special and take me by the hand and lead me to another part of the house. It was really far away from my room. Madame Wang would have me stand there and she would say,"

Toph shifted to a nicer version of her Madam Wang voice and said,

"Master Lao Bei Fong may I present your daughter Miss Toph Bei Fong."

"Then I would bow." At this Toph stopped in the road and made a very elegant bow to Sokka.

"Then a man's voice would say,"

The metalbender shifted into her version of her father's voice,

"'Acceptable', or' I don't like the hair', or 'There is something wrong with the head', or 'Very good'. Sometimes he would ask 'What have you learned since our last visit?' or something like that. After about five minutes he would say 'You may go' and I would bow and Madame Wang would take my hand and we would go back to my room. If Daddy was unhappy then 'Poor Girl' would be whipped. If I was acceptable we would have a sweet cake."

"About six months later I ran away. I waited until Madame Hong had to use the potty and I slipped out of bed and tried to find the door. This was before I knew I was an earthbender so I had to feel my way everywhere. I didn't even know my own room that well. When I got out the door I didn't know which way to go, so I went in the direction that we always went to visit my father since there were stairs in that direction. It took me forever to feel my way down the hall and I had only gotten down a couple of steps when Madame Hong grabbed me and carried me back to my room."

"'Poor Girl' got thirty lashes the next day. I begged Wang to whip me instead but the good Madame would have no part of that. She made me feel each welt on 'Poor Girl'."

"How old were you?" Sokka asked.

"Around five, that was the first time I ran away. I got a lot better at it though."

"Toph you are amazing." Sokka proclaimed. Then he added in an offhand manner,

"I just love you."

To Toph's credit she didn't faint, she just had trouble breathing for about five minutes.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Authors Notes:

This is just some background for the characters as I see them. The cultural practices described were common for the two cultures in the past. I hope I have not done too much violence to Bryke's original concept of their characters.

The charcoal pen that Sokka invents is based on Sokka's invention of the grease pencil by Menamebephil, and is used with his kind permission. If you have not read his stories you should, they are excellent.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

A big thank you to all those who have taken the time to review this story. You really make a big difference to me and the story.

Thanks again to **Vox Populi **for all his help, and the dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	12. Chapter 12

I'll Walk You Home pt 12

Chapter 5

pt. 3

A Walk in the Woods

* * *

Sokka woke up. He did a quick inventory. Yes everything was still there, and it all hurt. It had all hurt when he went to sleep last night, and it still hurt this morning. _It is morning, isn't it?_ He opened one eye a little, and saw that the sky was grey. _Yup, morning!_

Sokka hated getting up early. It was just unnatural to be up in the morning. Getting up sometime around noon was far more natural. Staying up all night, then going to bed around morning was much the wiser course of action, but ever since his father had left, and Sokka had to supply the entire village with food, he had been forced to rise early, and hunt and fish all day, just to keep everyone from starving.

On top of that, when the young warrior had finally received some training, _Nowhere near enough!_ The young man thought bitterly, _I don't get to wonder around the world with my teachers, like some people I know._ He realized that he was going to have to do a lot of the training on his own, so…, if he was ever going to get anything done, he would have to train before the day began. This meant that he had to get up early every day to get any practice in at all. Besides, Toph would be getting him up soon anyway, so what was the point.

He pulled the blanket up over his face to get another five minutes of sleep. This unfortunately pulled the blanket off of his feet. His feet were very sore from all the walking he had done in the last two days, and the cold air hitting them intensified the pain.

On top of everything, he really had to pee.

The young man sat up on his ground cloth. It was a heavy wool cloak, dark green in color, that he had bought for this trip. It had been rubbed with oil so it would repel water. The plan was to use it as both a ground cloth, and if the need arose, he could use it as a rain cloak.

He looked around for his pants. He was just in his loin cloth, a simple affair of a cloth belt wrapped around his lower waist, and a cotton cloth pulled through front and back. The original had been made from skins, but in his travels, the warrior had discovered cotton cloth, and preferred it to the traditional materials now.

The teen thought a moment then decided to forget about getting dressed up to go pee. _What was the point? If he put his pants on, he would just have to drop them to take care of business. There should be a better way of designing trousers so you didn't have to take them off all the time. Besides, there was no one around to see him in his underwear. Well there was Toph, but she was family. _He had been brought up to not be shy about his body around family. Any time you were indoors, you would take off all your clothes to share your heat with the family. He and his sister had spent most of their indoor life naked.

_Toph was not family_ He reminded himself,_ but she was a friend, and it's not like she is a girl or anything. Well yes of course she is a girl._ He knew that_. As a matter of fact she was becoming more of a girl, or woman really, every day._ He had definitely noticed the changes_. But the point was that she was a friend, and she did not act like a girl. Not that she acted like a boy, but she didn't act like the other girls he knew. She was different. She was special._ That was why he liked being around her._ He could have fun with her. _

_You had fun with Yue._ He thought, _Yes but Yue is gone now, besides that was different. What about Suki?_ He asked, _Do Suki and I have fun?_ The more he thought about it, he had to admit, that the answer was _No, not really_ They had trained together but that was more painful than fun. They had gone out a couple of times, and they had had sex, and while _The sex was great!_ it wasn't really fun. It had been passionate, and loving, but not _Fun_.

He suddenly realized, that the girl, the person really, he had had the most just downright enjoyable, silly, childish, good time, _Fun!_ with was the blind twelve year old earthbender. _That's a little disturbing._ He thought. _Well she doesn't act like a twelve year old._ He told himself, _Though maybe she does and I do too._

Well none of this was emptying his bladder. _Wait a minute_ He thought. _Toph can't see. I could run around naked, and she wouldn't even notice, so it doesn't matter anyway._ He looked over to where his friend had gone to sleep and saw that an earthtent had been erected where her sleeping pad had been last night. The young earthbender must have put that up last night some time. He was sure she had just been sleeping on the ground, as he worked on the letters he needed to send out.

_Well that's even better._ He told himself. He stood up and headed into the woods to discharge his responsibilities.

* * *

Toph lay inside her earthtent very much awake. She was a volcano ready to erupt. Her hands were clenched in fury. Her teeth bared.

_How could he do that?_ She asked herself. How could he stand there _well alright, walk there_ and tell her that. They were supposed to be friends, and he had still spoken the worst, most hateful, and foulest thing he possibly could. To _alright walk there_ and say,

"I just love you."

The words were still echoing in her brain, and they would for the rest of her life.

She'd kill him. That's what she would do. Just kill him.

At first she didn't believe that he had actually said what she thought she had heard. Then she did believe it, and she had been floating along for a while, not even feeling the earth below her. Blushing furiously and trying to hide it.

But eventually she had realized that he did not mean it the way she had at first thought. He meant that he loved her the way he loved his boomerang, or the way he loved stewed sea prunes, or worst of all, the way he loved his little sister.

She was going to kill him.

Last night, after she had finally gotten to sleep, the horrible dreams had come. First it was the little girl running and dancing through her brain singing,

"Sokka and Toph are married"

"Sokka and Toph are married"

Then she felt his hands on her face, warm and gentle, and his lips hovering over her own, his warm breath mingling with hers, which seemed to go on for hours. Then the last dream, where she was back in the "Rain Bath" in Ba Sing Se, and the hot water was running down her bare skin, and his large, strong hands were rubbing her shoulders and back, and his deep voice was saying over and over,

"I just love you. I just love you. I just love you."

The sound of someone moaning had woken her from the dream. She had lain there frightened, and listening, but all she heard was the sound of Sokka's loud snores from a few paces away. That was when she realized that she had been the one moaning. She found herself lying face down on her blanket, sweaty and panting, with her hands somehow trapped underneath her. She was afraid she had wet her bed, something she had not done since she was a very little girl. She pulled her arms out from under her and that was when she had bent the earthtent around her. She was frightened and ashamed and she did not know why.

What frightened her the most, was that her body was changing, becoming something new, and she had no control over it. Her body was betraying her the way it had when she was born, with useless eyes, but now she was old enough to be aware of the treason. She was losing all control over herself. Blushing, and crying, and having bumps growing on her chest, that would get hot and pointy at the worst possible times, and lower down, she would get hot and wet for no reason. Well that wasn't quite true. There was a reason, and he was laying on the earth just a few steps away.

Toph had done her best to escape from him, but the stupid young man had refused to let her go. He had insisted on staying with her. She could not get away from him. She could not get away from all the things he was doing to her, in his typical, blind, unthinking way.

She threw herself face down on her blanket and buried her face into her make shift pillow. Her eyes were starting to burn again, and tears would not be far behind.

She hated him so much.

The young earthbender dug her hands and feet into the earth and felt for the young tribesman. He was sitting on that stinking wool thing he used as a ground cloth. She felt him stand up and step onto the earth, scratching his head. Now that he was on the ground, Toph sent a fine wave of bending through the earth. Normally she only felt the outlines of people, but for an earthbender who could feel ants digging in the earth ten paces away, it was easy for her to focus and get a much more detailed feel for someone close by.

_He's naked!_ she told herself. Then she realized he did have something on. He was wearing his water tribe version of a fundoshi. Of course that was all he was wearing. Unlike civilized people who wore underwear over their underwear, he was just in his underwear. (Toph wore an under tunic over her breast wrap and under shorts over her own loin cloth.) But in essence he was naked. She felt his long lean body, the body of a swordsman and a swimmer, not the bulging body of an earthbender, as he walked towards the woods. He was scratching his head, and his stomach, and his butt. She stopped feeling him after that. She was starting to get pointy and wet at that point.

She was going to kill him.

_"I just love you."_ Echoed through her mind.

Toph lay on her stomach hating everything about Sokka. His lean body, his long, strong arms, his large, warm hands, his long gentle fingers, his deep voice, his wit, his sense of fun, his brilliance, his goofiness, his always being there for her, his covering her with his own body when he thought she was in danger, his willingness to try anything with her. She hated it all.

She pulled her hands from the earth and began pounding her fists into her small sack of clothes that was her pillow. She was pounding it with such violence that she was actually bouncing slightly on her blanket. She hated, hated, hated, hated him. She was going to kill him, kill him, kill, kill, kill, kil, ki, k, k ,k .

She stopped. She was sweating, panting, and feeling all pointy and wet again, and realizing she really had to pee.

* * *

The young man and the girl were walking down the trail towards the ancient "Roaming Road" that would take them across the desert. It had not been a good morning. Sokka had tried to start up a conversation but had received only sharp monosyllabic replies from Toph, so he had given up.

The tribesman had to admit to himself that he just did not understand girls. He had thought that yesterday had been a good day. They had talked, had fun, he had even told her how much he liked her, but today all she wanted to do was bite his head off. Girls just made no sense at all.

He adjusted the straps on the two large water skins he was carrying. At first he had planned to fill all four of the skins, but after lifting a full one out of the stream that morning, he realized just how heavy they were, and decided that two were more than enough, and would probably last them a week, let alone the two days it should take them to cross the desert. Maybe he could sell the two unused skins at the village they should come to before the start of the desert.

* * *

It was midday before Toph voluntarily said anything. She announced that there was a village up ahead, and that the desert was just beyond it.

"That's great!" Sokka said brightly, hoping to get a conversation going.

"Shut-up!" Toph replied.

"O-kayyy" Sokka answered quietly.

_This is going to be a long day._ He told himself.

* * *

Soon the trail they were on joined a much wider way, leading down out of the hills. This was the remnant of the ancient "Roaming Road" the young warrior was hoping to find. Running along beside the road was an aqueduct, built up from a series of arches. It looked very old. It appeared to have been built from blocks of cut stone, not from earthbending. Sokka thought it must date all the way back to the "Roaming Empire" which predated bending.

As they came out of the sparse trees Sokka could see, a couple of "milles" down on the flat, a small village, which was built on the ruins of an ancient "Roaman" fortified camp. The aqueduct ended in the settlement. Beyond the village the beginnings of the Si Wong Desert could be seen.

Taking his life in his hands Sokka suggested,

"I thought we could do a little shopping in the town, then rest up for the rest of the afternoon, and start across the desert this evening. Sleep during the day and then finish the crossing tomorrow night."

"Fine!" Was Toph reply.

"O-kayyyy."

* * *

In less than an hour they were passing through the ruins of the once great fortress, and were in amongst the small collection of buildings that comprised the village. The young man looked for a likely store where he might be able to sell the two unused water skins.

* * *

The young girl was getting a feel for the village. All the buildings were of earthbending construction, with thick walls and light roofs. It had been a day since she had felt anyone other than the tribesman and herself, and it surprised her how good it felt to feel others around her again. This was not Ba Sing Se, and she could easily follow the few inhabitants as they slowly moved around the town.

Sokka saw a likely store and asked his touchy companion,

"I want to get some supplies, do you want to come with me?"

"No!" The young girl still wanted to kill him.

"Well, can I leave these two water skins with you then?" He asked. "I'll be right back."

Toph thought about it for a moment then finally relented with an,

"Alright, but don't be long. I'm not here to watch your stuff."

"Be right back."

Sokka dropped the two skins at the earthbenders feet, in front of the shop. His shoulders burned with the sudden release from the weight.

* * *

The young man was blinded by the sudden darkness inside the shop. He had not realized how bright it had been outside until he came into the dark coolness of the store. Slowly his eyes adjusted and he noticed an older man in Earth Kingdom green sitting in a chair by the counter. No one else was in the shop.

"Planning to cross the desert?" The proprietor asked.

The teen thought at first to deny his plan, but then thought better of it. Why else would he be here if not to cross the desert, so he turned to the older man and just raised an eyebrow.

The shop owner gave a rueful laugh and said,

"Yeah… not many use the old road these days. You are going to need a lot more water than what you are carrying." He said indicating the young man's small bota bag.

Sokka was careful to keep his face toward the shop keeper. He did not want the merchant to see the two large water skins tied to his rucksack just yet.

"Yes, I thought so." The tribesman said, then asked, "Do you have any of those really big Koala-Goat skin ones?"

"Sure," the shop man told him, "just over there on the wall."

"How much?" Sokka asked.

"Two gold."

That was more than twice what Sokka had paid for his in Ba Sing Se. The young man rubbed his hands.

* * *

Toph was standing in front of the shop thinking up ways to kill her companion. She did not think that Katara would mind so much, she did not seem to like Sokka all that much, but she was a little worried about what Aang would say. Not that he actually liked the young tribesman, but he seemed to be against killing in general, and would probably not look kindly on Toph murdering anyone, even if it was the most obnoxious, the most horrible, and the most oblivious idiot in the history of the universe.

Maybe she would not kill him. Maybe she would just bury him a thousand of his "milles" under the desert. That way she could tell her friends that they had become separated in the desert and she did not know where he had gotten to. Yeah she liked that. That plan could work.

She was interrupted in her pleasant day dream by a young boy asking her,

"Miss? Miss?"

She focused her bending on the boy that was standing in front of her. He sounded much younger than he appeared. He was at least as tall as she was but sounded like he was years younger. She could feel his heart beat racing a little as he stood there.

"What?" She asked, a little sharply.

"Please Miss, would you like to buy my oranges?"

Toph felt bad for the kid. His heart rate had jumped when she had snapped at him. She was angry at Sokka, not some poor Sand Tribe kid. She could tell he was Sand Tribe from his clothes. He was holding something out in front of her. She could not tell what they were with her bending.

"Just two coppers, Miss?" He asked fearfully.

"Let me see them." She told him, in a nicer tone.

The young girl held out her hands, and felt two nubbly spheres placed in them by the boy. She felt them and smelled them. They were firm but ripe, and they smelled like oranges.

"Just one copper for both Miss. Please?"

Toph held the fruit and thought about it.

"Good for the desert." The boy said hopefully. Then added, "Both food and water all in one."

"Ok kid." She told him.

The earthbender juggled the fruit in one hand as she opened her small bundle with the other. Stuffed the oranges in and reclosed it. Then she reached into her belt feeling for the money pockets hidden on the inside. She counted down to the first copper piece pocket and pulled out two coins. She felt them to make sure they were the right size and shape, then she licked one to make sure it tasted of copper. Satisfied, she wiped it on her sleeve and then dropped both coins in the boy's outstretched hand.

"There you go." She said.

"Thank you Pretty Lady!" The boy said bowing to her. Then he added, "I'm sure you'll like them."

He was bouncing with excitement at his sale.

"S'ok kid." Toph told him.

She felt the boy turn and run off toward a small group of Sand Tribe adults in front of another shop. He held a coin in each hand, up in the air as he ran up to them, showing off his prizes.

* * *

A few minutes later Sokka emerged from the shop. He was clinking a number of coins in one hand and had a pair of odd shoe like things in the other.

"What are those?" Toph asked.

Her mood had lightened quite a bit, after her encounter with the "Orange Boy". The boy calling her pretty lady had nothing to do with it of course.

"Sand shoes." The young man explained, holding them out to her, forgetting once again that she was blind.

"Oh that tells me everything." The young girl sarcastically replied.

"They're like snow shoes but for sand."

"Ahh…, and what, pre tell are snow shoes." _For such a smart guy, he really was an idiot._

"Oh yeah, you wouldn't know about those."

The tribesman said, rubbing the back of his neck, thus hitting himself on the head with the sand shoes.

"They're shoes for walking on snow."

"Really?" The bender asked too brightly.

Sokka sighed and while putting the coins away in his belt pouch, and tying the sand shoes to the outside of his shoulder bag explained,

"They are made out of bone and sinew, like a stiff net. They spread your weight out and your foot doesn't sink into the snow. It makes it a lot easier to travel quickly over deep snow. Well these are the same idea but for sand. These are a lot smaller then snow shoes but still should support me."

"Did you get a pair for me?" The girl asked.

"You are the greatest bender in the world."

"That never gets old." She interrupted.

"Only useless non benders like me need them."

"And don't you forget it." She needled, with a laugh.

Sokka laughed too. This was a lot better than this morning. This was like the real Toph. As he shouldered the two heavy water skins he suggested,

"Hey, dear Tui these things are heavy, while we're here why don't we get some lunch?"

"Yeah, why not?"

Toph had originally thought they could have the oranges for lunch, but a hot meal sounded good and that way she could save the fruit for tonight after dinner. They would be her desert dessert.

* * *

They soon found a restaurant, there was only one, and went inside. Sokka was once again stymied by the dim light inside but both of them welcomed the cooler air. Neither had noticed how hot it was getting until they felt the contrast.

"Can't see." The swordsman told his companion.

"Poor baby. That must be so terrible."

"Greatest bender" Sokka said pointing to Toph. "Useless non bender." He added pointing to himself.

"This way little boy." She said taking his hand and leading him to a table.

_Oh crap._ The girl thought as she took his hand and felt her heart jump. I can't even hold his hand without my body going crazy.

She dropped his hand at the table.

"Thanks." He said.

They both divested themselves of all their gear and sat down. A young woman came over and introduced herself.

"Hi, I'm Lilly. What can I get you?"

She was an attractive girl. He outfit was an odd combination of earth and fire nation. It was a two piece with a wrap over top and a pair of draw string pants, that were worn low on her hips. The top had a very wide bias which displayed quite a lot of her feminine virtues. As his eyes adjusted, Sokka had a hard time maintaining eye contact with Lilly. He spent most of his time looking at Toph.

"What have you got?" Toph asked her.

Lilly ran down a long list of fried things and then a list of noodles.

"I'll have the chicken/pig Chow Fun." The bender told her.

"And for you sir?"

"I'll have the barbecued chicken/pig fried rice." The fifteen year old told her, desperately trying to maintain eye contact.

"And can we have an order of fried wontons as well." He added.

"Certainly." Lilly breathed.

Then placing a hand on the table, she bent over at the waist, and looking into the young man's face, asked in a low breathy voice,

"You're Water Tribe, aren't you?"

As the pretty waitress leaned over, Sokka could see that she was not wearing a breast band under her top, as well as being able to see a lot of other things as well. He completely gave up on maintaining eye contact with Lilly, and turned to look at his companion instead.

"I don't mean to be forward." Lilly said, as she leaned even farther forward. "But you're darker than the Sand Tribes, and with the blue eyes, I thought you must be Water Tribe."

"I wouldn't know." Sokka said nervously. "I mean about the Sand Tribes. I know about the Water Tribes, well at least the Southern Tribe. Well I know a little about the Northern Tribe as well, oh, and the Swamp Tribe too. I guess I know about all the Water Tribes now that you mention it."

"Yes, he's Water Tribe." Toph told the girl.

Lilly seemed to not hear the earthbender's remark, and kept staring into the young tribesman's eyes.

"I've never met a Water Tribesman before." The waitress said in her throaty whisper. "Your skin's so dark, and those eyes."

She reached out her free hand towards the boys face as if to touch it. Sokka turned his face toward the woman and leaned back in his chair to open some distance.

"We'd also like some tea. Please!" Toph asked pointedly.

Lilly stood up and gave the earthbender a little sneer as she said.

"Of course madam."

The waitress turned and walked into the kitchen.

"Why do girls always do that to me?" The handsome young man asked.

_Because we all want you, you idiot._ Toph thought, _Because your gorgeous, and different, and kind, and thoughtful, and gentle, and you get all embarrassed and cute. I can't even see you and I want you._

"I don't know." The earthbender told him. "We must all hate you."

"I believe it." Sokka said in a depressed voice.

The young man looked at the young girl across the table from him. In the diffused light coming from the window, her pale skin glowed. She had pulled her long pony tail of black hair over her shoulder and was stroking it absently. To his eye she looked beautiful. He pulled his note book and "Charcoal Pen" out and started doing a quick sketch of her.

"What are you doing?" The girl asked.

"Oh nothing." the boy answered.

He continued with the sketch, as he told her,

"You know one of the things I really..." He paused. He was about to say _love_ but after this morning he thought better of it and said, "like about you, is that you don't make fun of me. Well you do, but not like that." He motioned towards where the waitress had gone.

"You make fun of me, not try to embarrass me."

_I would love to stick my boobs in your face. _The girl thought, _it's just that I don't have any, and I'd be even more embarrassed than you would._ aloud she said,

"Hey, we're friends."

"I'm glad we are." The boy said still working on the sketch.

"But don't think that, that will stop me from kicking your butt anytime I want to." She told him.

"The thought never entered my mind."

Toph sat and waited for her tea. She wondered if she should trip Lilly when she came back with it. Then decided against it. Although she would enjoy taking the hussy down a peg, she would rather have the tea.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Sorry this is a day late. I am much more comfortable with people hitting each other on the head, than I am with feelings and feeling. I hope this chapter worked for everyone.

The next chapter will have more action.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

( I couldn't figure out how to reply to you guys directly so I stuck it in here.)

To Gina; thank you for both of your reviews, here is the next chapter.

To anonymous Werewolf; thank you very much.

To Anonymous; thank you very much. Yes Menamebephil is one of my favorites as well. Hopefully I did better on the commas in this chapter. I have a terrible tendency to write long, run-on sentences, and you are spot on about my dearth of commas.

A big thank you to all you others who have taken the time to review this story. You really make a big difference to me and the story.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome


	13. Chapter 13

I'll Walk You Home pt 15

Chapter 6

pt. 1

A Desert Dessert

* * *

Lunch went well, for the most part. Lilly kept having problems with setting food down in front of Sokka. Toph kept having problems with Lilly setting food down in front of Sokka. Sokka kept having problems maintaining eye contact with Lilly, when she was having problems setting the food down, which gave Toph even more problems. Lilly eventually tripped on her way back to the kitchen, and did a face plant into the floor.

Even the young earthbender had to admit that the food was pretty good. The tribesman eventually ordered a cold dinner of lo mein, rice balls, and fried dumplings to go, so they could eat it for dinner.

* * *

They left the village and set up a small day camp to rest up for the desert. Toph laid out her bedroll and set up an earthtent. She did not want to have any incidents while dreaming that would be heard, or seen by her companion. The young man had complicated her life more than enough, not to mention the lost sleep he had caused her in the last month. She was able to nap through most of the afternoon without obvious problems.

Sokka cut poles and stakes and, using his rain cloak as the cover, set up a lean-to. He spent the rest of his time writing letters. Once he had finished the letters he checked his map again. Then he went through his note book to see if he had missed anything. He ended on the little sketch he had made at the restaurant. Even he had to admit that his abilities had not done Toph justice. She was turning into a beautiful young woman, and his poor skill could not capture it. He worked on the sketch until it was time to pack up.

* * *

In the late afternoon, the fifteen year old packed up the camp and knocked on the wall of Toph's earthtent, to let her know it was time to get started.

Within a half an hour they were back on the ancient road heading into the desert.

The young warrior had tied the two shorter upright poles from the lean-to onto his pack. The long horizontal pole he carried, sometimes using it as a walking staff, sometimes laying it across his shoulders and hanging his hands over it. Sometimes he pretended it was a spear and would swing and thrust it about him. Sometimes it became an extremely long sword that he would defeat great opponents with.

When the staff became a weapon the teen would narrate the battle to his companion,

"Fire Lord Crab Grass, you didn't expect me to have the 'Spear of Great Lean-To' did you? Ha! Ha! Take that you over grown weed!"

Toph walked along beside him laughing and adding her own comments to the battle,

"Look out behind you 'Great Warrior'" She would tell him, "General Sage and his bushes are attacking."

"Wang Fire, greatest warrior of the Fire Nation, is always ready. Feel the steel of his impossibly long sword of instant death and destruction!" The boy would shout while swinging his staff in a great arc behind him.

The earthbender was glad to feel and hear her friend playing and being silly again. After the failed invasion during the "Day of Black Sun" he had become more and more serious, and down on himself. This was the Sokka she remembered, the little boy, making a toy out of anything, making life a fun game that anyone could play with him.

Soon, it felt soon but in reality it had taken a couple of hours to walk the distance, the sun was setting, and they were entering the great expanse of the sand dunes of the Si Wong Desert.

The "Roaming road" they were on was well designed, and had survived the centuries of neglect very well. Also the sand did not build up in large dunes on it. The engineers had designed it so that the prevailing westerly wind kept the road clear, for the most part, with only a few centimeters of sand on it.

Even though the sun was almost down, Sokka could feel the heat, soaked up by the sand during the day, coming off of the dunes in waves. The young man turned to his companion and asked,

"How are your feet holding up against the hot sand? If you want I can carry you for a bit."

"I'm fine." The young girl told him. "As long as we keep moving my feet don't get too hot."

"Well if you need a break, just let me know."

Toph's arm shot out and hit the young hunter on the arm.

"Thanks." She said.

Sokka absently rubbed the spot that had just been hit. Toph covertly shook her hand. _Either my hand is getting soft, or his arm has gotten a lot harder._ She thought to herself. They had not had a lot of time together in the last couple of months. First there had been Suki, who seemed to suck up all the free time the teen had. Then with the end of the war, when you would have thought they all would have had nothing but free time, Sokka had become very busy with meetings, and committees, and training, and letters. For the self described, "Least important person she knows" her companion was always in demand.

As the sky darkened and the night slowly came on they continued down the road in quiet.

Finally, the young man broke into the young girls thoughts with,

"It's funny, you know, during the war I made all these plans, none of which worked of course," This last was delivered with a self deprecating laugh. "But I never made any plans for after the war."

The young man turned to the young earthbender and asked her,

"Did you ever think about after the war?"

Toph had to admit to herself that she had not. She had just assumed that the four of them would just go on as they had during the war, traveling and having adventures, that she and Sokka would spend the rest of their lives together.

"Not really." She told him, embarrassed to admit the truth.

"Same here." He replied, then he added, "Don't laugh but I thought we would just keep going, you know, the four of us, just traveling around, pulling scams when we needed money, and having adventures when we got bored, for the rest of our lives. Pretty silly of me."

"Yeah!" She said.

She noticed that he had said "the four of them".

"You know it's kind of sad." The boy said, wistfully, "That the best times in your life were during a war. It doesn't seem right. But it wasn't the war that was good, it was being with people you liked, with all that freedom, doing something that seemed important. Not that anything I did was ever important. It's like the old saying 'life is what happens to you, while you're making plans to do something else'. Spending your life doing what you want to, with people you like, is just a dream."

"Let's not have a 'pity party' Meathead." Toph said pointedly.

Towards the end of the war, Sokka had begun to get down on himself. Talking about how useless he was. He had improved a little, after training with Sifu Piandao, and he had "Space Sword", but since the end of the war, and his loss of his sword, the young warrior had begun the downward spiral again. He would make it sound as if he was not serious, just being sarcastic. But deep down, the young girl new he meant it.

Toph felt it was, at least in some part, Suki's fault. At first the earthbender had been embarrassed around the Leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, because of the serpent pass "Oh Sokka you've saved me" kiss mix up. Then when the tribesman had rescued the warrior girl, and brought her back to the Western Air Temple, the younger girl had tried to accept her into the group, had even tried to like her. But it had never really worked. Now the earthbender actively hated the "Island Warrior Queen". It seemed to Toph, that all Suki wanted to do now was to show her superiority to the water tribesman, and run him down in front of others.

This attitude of Sokka's, of not being good enough, hurt the young metalbender, though she would never admit it. She thought that Sokka was unique, special, and the best person in the world. _Not that I like him or anything._ She did not like it when anyone, including himself, made fun, or disparaged him. She was the only one that was allowed to do that.

* * *

Around midnight they stopped by the side of the road, and ate their cold supper. After eating, while they were just sitting resting, Toph felt Sokka lean back and stare up at the sky. The young earthbender assumed that he was staring at the moon. Something he often did, wherever they were. She knew about Yue from the play they had seen, and she was both jealous of the girl, and sad for her friend at the thought of him looking up at the moon.

"Full Moon?" The young girl finally asked.

"It's only a quarter moon tonight, but I was actually looking at the stars. It's a beautiful sky tonight. In the city, because of all the walls, and the lights you can't see much of the sky. But out here it's like being back home, or out at sea. You can see the whole sky, and it's so dark that you can really see the stars."

"I didn't know these stars when Katara and I left to follow Aang." The southerner went on. "The stars back home are different, but most of these stars were new to me, so I made up my own constellations."

"What are constellations?"

The young man leaned back onto his elbows as he explained,

"Constellations are groups of stars that make a kind of a picture, to help you remember the stars. So there is 'Katara's Water Whip'". He said pointing. "It sort of looks like a water whip since it is a line of bright stars that curve.

He continued to point to different areas of the sky as he named more constellations.

"That's 'Aang's Arrow' and there's 'Yue's Hair', which is this big swath of stars that runs across the sky up here in the north. It almost looks like a cloud in the sky."

Toph had lain down on her stomach, facing the young man, to listen to his star names. When he mentioned his lost girlfriend, she lowered her head. She knew she could not compete with a beautiful girl, who had sacrificed herself to save the world. Sokka would always love the northern princess.

"And there's Mom, there's Dad, there's my canoe, and over there is Suki with her fans, maybe I should change that one to Avatar Kyoshi with her fans." The boy said wryly.

Toph was surprised that the young man had said that last. Normally he only defended or praised his current girlfriend. _Calm down!_ she told herself._ It doesn't mean anything._

"And there's… " The tribesman said pointing. "you."

"Me?" The girl raised her face towards him.

"Well just your face really. It's a group of stars, in kind of a roundish circle with two slightly dimmer ones in the center. It reminded me of your face, with the two pretty stars as your eyes."

Toph was surprised to say the least. _Pretty? Face? Me?_ She asked herself.

"Really?" The earthbender asked. "I'm up there?"

"Oh you're all over the place." The boy said. Then he began to point out areas all over the sky.

"There's the 'Metalbender', and there's 'The Blind Bandit and The Boulder', you're winning of course." He said smiling.

"Of Course." She agreed.

Sokka then rolled over onto his stomach and pointing to another area he said,

"There's you and me. You're the shorter one on the right. You're holding onto my arm, and I have my boomerang out, and we walk across the sky together during the night."

This last he said while rolling onto his back, with his two arms extended, showing the path of the constellation through the night sky.

"Are you ok?" He asked, turning towards his friend in concern.

Toph, who had suddenly started gasping for air, managed to choke out,

"Fine, just swallowed wrong."

"So stars… stars…, how to explain stars…" the boy spoke more to himself than to her.

He began to idly pick up a handful of sand and let it fall through his fingers. He did this a few times then sat up straight and excitedly asked.

"This desert, when you feel it, is it all the same?"

Toph, who had been bending the sand under her fingertips into different shapes and designs, thought a moment before replying. She had been working hard on her sand bending, and the desert was no longer an amorphous mass to her. She was able to tell the difference between the windward side of the dunes, that were more compacted, than the loose leeward side. She had realized on this trip that there was a lot of variation in the sand of the desert. Finally she answered,

"Well sort of, I mean it is all sand, but all the sand is different."

She continued to casually bend the sand with her hands.

"But generally it is all the same, now if I took like a gem stone, say a diamond, and stuck it into the sand here." He poked a hole in the sand beside him with his finger. "You could feel the difference right?"

"Oh sure!" she answered. "Gem crystals feel a lot different than regular rock or earth. With sand it would be even easier."

"Remind me to go prospecting with you sometime" The boy said smiling. He took out his little book and made a note. He then continued,

"So this desert is like the night sky, and the stars are like diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other gems. And there are maybe, oh I don't know, like one hundred thousand, or maybe a million of them spread throughout the sand. But not evenly, more like a giant hand threw a thousand at a time out onto the desert, and they are all different sizes, mostly diamonds, but other stones too. Could you feel all the stones?"

"Yeah." She replied, imagining what it would feel like. "Yeah, that would be really beautiful, feeling all those gems spread out like that."

"Of course you would have to put the whole desert on a giant pu pu platter, like in a restaurant, so you could spin it around once every twenty-four hours. And you would have to have one diamond in the center that didn't move at all. And then…"

"Sokka?" The girl said, cutting him off.

The young man's brain would keep filling in more and more detail, to make the analogy perfect. She preferred to keep the beautiful image he had given her simple, and clear in her mind.

After a time the boy said,

"We should get going."

"Ok" The girl said.

With her hand she wiped out the image she had been working on. She did not want the boy to see it.

Soon they were walking south again on the ancient highway.

* * *

In a little over an hour they passed a small ruin with a side road going off to their right.

"On the map, this was a small fortress, and this road leads to another one about five or ten milles to the west."

"I can feel the foundations. Do you know what it was for?" The earthbender asked.

"No, the map didn't have a legend, I just noticed that this spot was a little more than half way across the desert."

* * *

They continued on, past the ruins, for another few hours until the sky became grey to the east, with the rising sun.

As was the plan, they set up camp, so they could sleep through the day. As they stripped off their gear, Sokka groaned with relief. The two large water skins were very heavy, and his shoulders ached with the combination of his rucksack and the water skins.

"How you holding up?" He asked his companion, while he tried to stretch the pain out of his back and shoulders.

"Fine." She told him, dropping her small bed roll.

He noticed that she too was rolling her shoulders and stretching her back.

"Help me set up the lean-to, and I'll give you a back rub." He offered.

With Toph's help the lean-to was up in minutes. Sokka decided to add his blanket to the open side, turning the shelter into a low tent, to give them shade through the day. Once the tent was up, Toph unrolled her sleeping mat, and the young man stuffed the rest of their gear in the corners, out of the way.

After thinking about it, he realized that, if they were on the road at sunset, they should be out of the desert long before dawn the next day. The two of them had only used a little of the water from one of the large skins he was carrying. He decided that they should keep using just the one skin, and leave the other full. He would then empty the partial skin in the morning, after they broke camp, and just carry the full one. That would cut his load substantially, and it should give them more than enough water for the remainder of the trip.

Instead of trying to sit in the low tent, they ended up sitting outside in the dawns light, to eat their dinner/breakfast. Which consisted of "Ship's Bread", something Sokka had found for sale in the city, and he had fallen in love with it. Toph thought it was hard and tasteless, but she ate a little anyway, and dried meat. It was a cold camp with no fire.

Once they were finished eating, The swordsman reached into the tent and pulled out the earthbenders sleeping mat.

"Here!" He told her. "Lie down on this."

"What for?" She asked, suspicion creeping into her voice.

"Your back rub." He answered brightly.

"I don't…"

"Come on, it will feel good." He cut her off.

Reluctantly she lay face down on the mat. The boy threw his leg over her, and kneeling, straddled her prone form, sitting lightly on her hips. The young girl had her head turned to the side, resting one side of her face on her hands, as she began to blush at the contact, she quickly hid it, by pulling her pony tail over the side of her face the young man could see.

Sokka started at her shoulders and neck, his long strong fingers gently finding all the spots where she stored her tension. Kneading the muscles until they were soft and relaxed. Then he moved down onto her spine and shoulder blades, moving slowly to her waist and then to just above her hips. Every time he leaned back, the pressure on her hips pushed her slightly into the sand. Every time he leaned forward he would press her chest slightly down against the mat. It was rhythmic and gentle and delicious.

Toph was able to prevent any moans from escaping from her lips, but she could not stop the sighs from getting out.

The teen was really enjoying giving his friend the back rub. He enjoyed giving her pleasure. _And the feel of her firm hips under you isn't bad either._ A part of his mind told him. _Stop that._ He yelled at himself. _She's just a kid._

His feelings for the young girl (_Ok, yes she is a girl._) had been changing, and it confused him. She had always been his best friend, _can a girl be a guy's best friend?_. Even if she did not like him, which was obvious, from the way she acted towards him. But now he was feeling more, which was the confusing part. _She's just a kid._ He told himself. But as his hands kneaded down to her waist, he was not feeling like she was a kid. He liked touching her, and wanted to touch her even more. To hold her hand, to hold her to him. It all felt good, and made his heart jump, and his blood pulse. _She's just a kid._ he kept telling himself. So he pushed his confusing feelings down, and tried to ignore them, but they kept coming back up, more and more now that they were together all the time.

Sokka finished the massage by scratching up and down the girl's back in long even strokes. Leaning forward and back, forward and back, slowing, until he was sitting lightly on her hips idly stroking her lower back.

"Well…" he said, reluctant to break the contact with her. "We should probably go to bed."

He pulled himself off of his friend, and stood up. He offered her his hand to help her up, but she just lay there a moment, before finally asking in a dreamy voice,

"What?"

"Sleep." He answered.

"I'm good here." Was her muffled response.

"Nawwww, you'll cook in the sun. Up you come." With this last, he leaned down and gently taking hold of her under her arm pits, he lifted her up to a standing position.

Toph leaned back into Sokka's chest for a moment, her legs were a little unsteady. She always forgot just how strong the warrior was, he was always so gentle around her, but then he would just pick her up like that, as if she did not weigh anything.

Once she was stable the boy let go of her, and began to unbuckle his leg brace. Soon he had his boots and clothes off and was down to just his loin cloth. He put it all away in the tent then scooted himself inside, pulling Toph's sleeping mat in beside him. Since he was using his cloak/ground cloth and his blanket for the tent he just lay on the sand inside the tent.

The earthbender was slowly taking off her own outer clothes. She got down to her under tunic, and under shorts by the time the young man was lying in the tent. Since he was lying directly on the sand, if she focused her bending, which she did, she could feel every detail of the part of him in contact with her element. That and the fact that there was very little room in the tent, which meant they would be lying right next to each other, caused a very deep, burning blush, to spread up from her chest into her face, neck, and ears. She unbound her hair and pulled it in front of her shoulders to hide this from her companion as she crawled into the tent, and onto her mat.

* * *

To be continued:

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**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Authors Notes:

I hope this chapter was not boring for you. Once again more feelings then fighting. I promise that there will be more action in the next chapter, but this seemed like the best place to stop.

About that, I will be away from the internet for the next two weeks so I am sorry to say there will be a big lag between this and the next chapter. I hope you will stick with the story through the break.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

(I couldn't figure out how to reply to you guys directly so I stuck it in here.)

To Cole: I found a Cole as an author but I was not sure if that was you, so I am answering you here. I agree that I tend to write Sokka as too mature. I think I do this because I am weak in writing him as he is in the show. I am just not good at the young sarcastic Sokka. Yes I am very hard on Suki, and your version is much more realistic. All I can say is that I do have my reasons (an author can always justify anything, even bad writing) for writing her that way, but unless I write my The Grand History of Sokka of the Southern Tribe, The Dark King of Legend, it will never actually come out. Yes, I need to read more. Thank you very much for your thoughtful and accurate review. I really appreciate it.

To Gina thank you for your reviews, I am sorry to hear that about your first story. I always take any criticism seriously and if it is a simple fix will go in and make changes. If it requires a major re-write then that is going to have to wait till I finish the story. Anyway, I would like to read anything you have up here, so please send me a title of yours, I would love to read it. Anyway here is the next chapter.

To anonymous Werewolf, again thank you very much.

To The1WhoIsntThere, thank you very much, that is exactly what I am trying to do with the characters, and also trying to move them by the end of the story, to more mature characters. I hope I can do all that and keep the story interesting.

To Anonymous, thank you very much, that is good to hear. Hopefully I have been able to maintain both good sentence structure and your interest in this chapter.

A big thank you to all those who have taken the time to review this story. You really make a big difference to me and the story. I have tried to respond to all of you directly, if I have missed anyone I am very sorry. I take every review seriously.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	14. Chapter 14

I'll Walk You Home pt 14

Chapter 6

pt. 2

A Desert Dessert

* * *

Toph lay on her mat, thinking. She quickly realized that she was not going to get much sleep. She was extremely tired, having only her mid day nap in the last twenty four hours, but that wasn't going to make any difference. Sokka was lying right next to her.

_What if I touch him? What if he touches me? What if we touch each other? What if he rolls over onto me? What if I roll over onto him? What if we roll over onto each other? WHAT IF I HAVE A DREAM? WHAT IF I'M HAVING A DREAM, WHILE HE'S ROLLING OVER ON TOP OF ME?_

She was starting to panic. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Sokka are you asleep?"

"Hm... What?" The boy responded sleepily.

She could feel him roll over onto his side, facing her.

"Oh, sorry." He said as the hand he had put out to steady himself, landed on her upper arm, touching her meteor arm-bracelet.

The young girl blushed furiously. The young man, not noticing his companion's discomfort, shifted away from her slightly, but only slightly, limited by all the gear he had stuffed into the tent.

"Maybe I should sleep outside." She suggested.

She had pulled her feet off of her mat, and by raising her knees slightly she was able to bury them into the sand. She could feel every detail of the warrior as he lay on his side next to her.

"Don't be silly, you'll cook out in the sun. Just go to sleep." He advised.

The muscled fifteen year old rolled over onto his stomach, and supporting his chest on his elbows, reached behind his head and untied his "wolf tail" letting his hair fall down around his face.

The earthbenders toes tingled, and her breath hitched a little in her chest, at the information her bending was sending from the sand under the young man, through her feet, and finally up to her brain.

The tribesman reached out and grabbed the clothes sack he used for a pillow, and hugging it in both arms, under his head, he laid down fully on his stomach.

Tingling was no longer applicable to the feeling in Toph's toes. Shocks, spasms, jolts all came to mind, but even they seemed a little inadequate.

_Pillow_ The earthbender thought. That's a good idea, if she had a pillow she could go to sleep. She rolled onto her side reaching for her bag. Once she had it, she rolled back, placing it under her head. Something wasn't right with the bag. There were two hard-ish some-things in it. Then she remembered the two oranges she had bought yesterday. Maybe if she ate something she would calm down and be able to get some sleep.

Toph dug the two oranges out of the bag. This required quite a lot of elbow, arm, and hand movement in the confined space of the tent. Which, in turn, required quite a lot of, albeit brief, contact with the nearly naked, very fit, really nicely toned, teenage boy lying next to her.

"You ok?" He asked, rolling onto his side towards her.

This of course brought him, by the general laws of physics, closer to her. She was still on her back, and was now holding the two oranges, one in each hand, over her chest.

"Orange?" She asked.

"No, thanks." He replied.

With her right hand, she placed one of the two fruit onto the sand on her open side. With her other hand she moved the second orange towards her mouth to bite into the skin so she could peel it.

"Let me get that for you." The young man said, leaning in to her, reaching for the fruit in her hand.

The movement, his close proximity, the feel of his breath on her cheek, distracted her, causing her to fumble, and drop the orange onto her chest. He reached down, grabbing the rolling fruit, grazing one of her breasts in the process, which caused the young girl's heart to stop completely, and breathing was no longer a consideration.

Toph wasn't sure what had touched her "bump". It could have been the orange, it could have been his hand. Either way she was frozen for an instant.

Sokka rolled onto his back, tossed the fruit from his left hand into his right, and then, using his left hand, reached for something amongst all the equipment on his free side. This opened the distance slightly between them, which allowed the earthbenders heart to start up again. Unfortunately it decided to make up for all that lost time, by beating about ten times faster than it normally did.

Toph decided she had to get control of herself. This was just ridiculous. She fell back on her normal way of dealing with the "Idiot", which was outrage, anger, and effrontery. She now rolled onto her side towards him. This had the unfortunate (or fortunate) effect of moving her closer to him, and her right hand landed firmly on the hard muscle of his upper arm. She quickly moved it into the small space of sand between them. Which caused a whole new series of problems since her hand was more sensitive to her bending senses than her feet were, and her hand was much closer to the boy as well. Pushing all that aside, she asked him, in her best offended voice,

"Do you think that just because I'm blind, I can't peel an orange?"

"Not at all." The handsome young man said. "It's just that I come from a highly advanced, tool using, civilization, that has invented a magical device, we call a K-nife."

He emphasized the "K" in "knife", and as he said it he flourished his heavy, wide bladed, skinning knife in his left hand. Deftly he tossed the knife into his right hand, while tossing the orange into his left, and began to peel the fruit.

"I'm shocked." She said, raising a scornful eyebrow at him. "That a culture as primitive as yours, even has the concept of fruit, not to mention the knowledge needed to peel a piece of it."

Sokka pushed himself up onto his side, which of course (good old physics), resulted in the two of them lying face to face with only a few millimeters separating them. He cocked an eyebrow at her, and in a extremely cultured and erudite voice told her,

"I'll have you know young lady, that not only do I know of fruit, but I have, on occasion, actually eaten a few pieces of it. Though I found it rather lacking in, well not to put too fine a point on it, meat! Also I should let you know, that I am raising an eyebrow, scornfully, in your general direction. I am telling you this because you are blind."

The warrior rolled onto his back, thus opening a little (very little) space between the two of them, and went back to peeling the fruit.

Sokka saw a series of blemishes on the orange as he began to peel it. He sniffed the fruit, it smelled ok and felt ok. He decided that the blemishes, which were regularly spaced around the orange, must be the result of the way it had been transported, but that the fruit was alright.

"Toph, I don't do things for you because you are blind." He told the young girl, as he peeled the fruit, "I do things for you because I like you, and I enjoy doing things for you. It has more to do with giving myself pleasure than it does with helping you. I don't do it because your blind, or young, or because you're pretty, well maybe a little bit because you're pretty, but you are just going to have to get used to that."

_He thinks I'm pretty!_ The young girl told herself.

"You're a pretty girl" He went on as he peeled. "And guys do things for pretty girls. That's a natural law or something. In a couple/three years, you're going to be a beautiful young woman, a real heartbreaker, and guys are going to be tripping all over each other trying to do things for you. So you better get used to it."

"I know you don't like it when people, especially me, try and do stuff for you. All I'm asking is, be nice, and every so often, give me a break, and let me. It will make me feel good, and it won't cost you anything."

The earthbender, blushing furiously at the offhand compliments the young man had just showered onto her, punched him hard in the shoulder.

"Yeah." She told him, "I'll be another Ty Lee."

Unconsciously she brought the knuckles of her right hand up to her mouth, and brushed them against her lips. Realizing what she was doing, she quickly dropped her hands to her sides, which put them into the sand, which sent the vibrations of the gorgeous young man's movements, especially his butt shifting in the sand, up into her brain. She immediately moved her hands off of the sand and eventually placed them on her stomach, having no where else to put them.

The sound of his voice brought her back to the tent when he commented,

"You'll be so much better than Ty Lee. You're so much stronger than she is. Ty uses guys, and like's to make fun of them, by playing games with them. You won't, well... don't, need to do that. You're stronger than that. You'll still break lots of hearts, but you won't do it in a mean way. You'll just be the rock that guys will dash themselves against. You won't have to sing a siren's song to lure them in, the way she does."

Out of the corner of his eye. Sokka noticed that the young girl was playing with her hair. Pulling it over her face. _I must be boring her_. He told himself. He was surprised when he received another punch to the arm.

Having finished peeling the fruit, the young man tossed the orange to his right hand while flipping the knife to his left. Feeling a little cocky he added a little flourish with the knife, and almost dropped it onto his chest, which would have been very painful, if not bloody, but he caught it by the grip in time.

"Here you go." He said handing the earthbender the fruit.

He, carefully this time, took the knife in his right hand and reached into his shoulder bag with his left. He pulled out a greasy rag he used for cooking, and wiped the blade clean of any acid, which would rust it, before putting the knife away.

"Get some sleep." He told her.

Then he adjusted the pillow under his head, and closing his eyes, he was soon asleep himself.

Toph, after taking the fruit, lay there until the young man had settled in, and was soon snoring quietly, before she began to move again. She had been blushing so furiously, even though she had tried to hide it with her hair, that he had to notice the effect his words were having on her. The heat coming off of her face alone should have burned him.

Finally, "The Idiot" was asleep, and she could relax. She slowly pulled sections of the orange off and ate them, thinking about "Meathead", and what he had just said.

The young girl found the orange very tasty, and very, very juicy. She couldn't remember eating one this juicy before. Even though she had started slowly, she found that she had finished it very quickly, and was licking her fingers for the last of the juice. It was really good.

The young earthbender reached down to her sides, and plunged her hands into the sand on either side of her mat, to dry them. She had never been fond of sand. It was always nebulous, and hard to "feel" through. She had worked very hard on her sand bending, and had improved tremendously, but as she dug her hands down into it, she felt the sand as something new. She could feel how all the grains fit together. How they rubbed against each other. She could feel the energy move between each grain. It was amazing!

The grains were all the same, yet each one was unique. Each one had its own shape, its own set of facets. They were all different. Now, the young girl could really feel every thing around her, in exquisite detail. By being able to feel each individual grain, she could now feel everything that was in contact with each grain. She could feel the beetle that was walking six paces away. She could feel each of its legs as they touched the sand as it moved along.

Even with her earthbending she had never been able to "feel" with this type of detail. All thoughts of sleep fled as she extended her senses farther out.

All the girl's senses were heightened. She could smell the dryness in the air. She could taste the heat being given off from the sun. She could hear the mustiness of the cloak, that made up half the tent over her. It was all so wonderful and amazing. As she was feeling, smelling, tasting, and hearing the world around her, she continued to move her hands and feet in and through the sand. She wanted to sense more, and more. Everything seemed so alive to her now.

The young metalbender continued to move her hands through the sand, trying to get more and more sensations from them. Her hand stopped when her little finger made contact with the boy lying next to her. A shock ran through her finger, into her arm, and up into her chest, causing her heart to pound agains her ribs.

* * *

Sokka slept. He was dreaming that he was floating on a sea of warm water. It was a pleasant dream. Back home the water was so cold, if you fell into it you would be dead in minutes. Finding warm water had been a revelation to the young tribesman. In the Fire Nation the water was so warm he would almost fall asleep as he floated in it. He loved his floating dreams.

The dream began to change. There were ripples in the water, and they moved along his back, butt, and legs. The ripples ran the whole length of his body. The ripples became smaller more distinct. They became small fingers, hundreds of them, running from his head to his feet. He was floating on a sea of small hands that were holding him up.

The young boy lay on the hands, he could feel the fingers of each of the hundreds of small hands as it ran along his body. He felt a weight on his stomach, and he began to sink into the hands. There were thousands of them now, moving up his sides, the fingers touching, running along his skin, over his sides, up onto his legs, his chest, onto his face. The dream was getting creepy, and a little unsettling to the young man. He tried to move the weight off of his stomach, his hands made contact with something. He felt cloth, and skin, very fine soft skin. He heard a giggle. He wasn't able to move the weight, he felt weak.

The fingers were now covering most of him, touching him, running all over him, covering his face. He tasted the grit of sand in his mouth. The feeling of suffocation finally woke him. The warrior's eyes shot open, to stare directly into the foggy, green eyes of his younger companion.

Toph was sitting on Sokka's stomach, her legs straddling him, and she was leaning forward, with her hands sunk into the sand on either side of his body. Her chin was almost resting on his chest. She had a huge grin on her face, and her eyes looked very far away. The tribesman could feel that his body was nearly buried in the sand. He could feel his face being covered, the last to disappear under the surface. All the sand was moving, pulsating, as it covered him. It was very strange, and creepy.

The young man's hands were up on the young girl's thighs. His fingers, which had slid up under the legs of her shorts, were wrapped around her upper thighs, his thumbs on her inner thighs. He had grabbed her in his sleep, when he was trying to shift her weight off of his stomach.

He looked into her eyes. He had always thought she had beautiful eyes, but there was something odd about the eyes he was looking into now.

The tribesman blew the sand off of his mouth and said,

"Toph!"

The pretty earthbender's eyes opened wide, she sat up, pulling her hands out of the sand, her back hitting the ceiling of the low tent. Sokka felt his body suddenly shift, coming out of the sand and once again he was lying on top of the sand.

"Oh you're awake" Toph said.

She began to use her hands to brush the sand off of his face. Her fingers lingered on his eyebrows, then they traced down to his nose.

"You have funny eyes." The girl told him. "And a funny nose."

"Yeah, my eyes are rounder than yours, and my nose is bigger." He told her absently.

_What is up with Toph?_ He asked himself.

The young man's hands were not idle. His fingers were stroking the soft skin under them. His thumbs tracing light circles on the fine flesh they had found. Her thighs were warm, soft on the surface, but with hard muscles moving under the fine skin. It was hypnotizing, and his hands were moving of their own accord.

Toph's fingers moved from his nose, down to his strong chin, then to his neck, tracing downward, over the ivory choker he habitually wore, then down onto his chest. As her fingers moved along his skin, the boy felt as if lines of fire were being drawn across his body. His blood pulsed in his veins, and pounded in his ears, his breath caught in his chest.

The girl's fingers paused on his chest, spreading, and covering his pectoral muscles. She began to massage the boy's strong chest.

"You have bumps!" She said in surprise. "But your bumps are hard, not soft."

"Bumps?" The young man asked, massaging her thighs.

"Bumps!" The pretty girl sitting on him said, "Like mine."

She leaned back, and reluctantly withdrawing her hands from the fit young man's chest, reached up, and began to pull her under tunic off, over her head. The low ceiling of the tent got in her way, and she had to lean down over the boy's body to get it off.

It took a moment before Sokka realized what his young friend was doing. Once it sank into his befuddled brain, that she was undressing, he tried to reach up and stop her. That was when he became aware of just where his hands had been this entire time, as they were caught under the young girl's shorts.

The thought of where his hands currently were, and what his fingers were stroking, especially where his thumbs were doing their little circular dance, added impetus to the speed with which he extracted said appendages from his friends underwear. It also caused a large quantity of blood to vacate his brain and rush into his face and ears. _At least she can't see me blushing_ he told himself.

By the time Sokka had gotten his hands free the gorgeous young girl had gotten her top off and had cast it aside. In shock, the young boy watched her hands move towards her breast bindings. At the last moment he was able to get his body responding, and reached out and grabbed her wrists, and pulled her hands down onto his own chest again. This caused her hips to slip farther down him, and she was now "sitting" on his abdomen, with her nose on his chest. Toph laughed at the new position she was in.

This was getting very bad very fast in the young man's opinion. As his friend was now lying on top of him, her "hips" had rolled out, and her butt was no longer the main point of contact between them. He pulled his knees up to prevent her from sliding down any further, since blood was no longer rushing to just his face, and he did not want to have to explain, to the beautiful young girl on top of him, just what it was she could soon be sitting on.

Toph began to sniff the strong young warrior's chest. She moved her head to smell different areas of him, which caused her to slid forward and back on his abdomen. This caused the little blood left in the fifteen year old boy's brain to scream in delight, and go charging down to join the rest of the party in his lower extremities.

_Not really my lower extremities _he told himself. _Really just one extremity, it's not like the blood is rushing to my feet or anything. And it's not actually an extremity. It is attached to my trunk. It is more of a minor organ or something. _Sokka's brain was rapidly failing. _Get a hold of yourself. _He ordered his brain.

This was all so wrong. If he didn't act soon, Toph was going to be, unknowingly, giving him one of those special dances, that Haru had told him about. The type you could only get at those "Gentleman's Clubs", and that would be just too wrong.

To stop the young girl's sliding motion, he let go of her hands and firmly grabbed (there really was no nice way of putting it) her butt, and held her still. He waited for the violence inherent in such an act with the young earthbender, but to his great surprise, she didn't seem to take any notice. She continued to smell his chest. An unlooked for result of her head movement across his body was that her beautiful, silky, black hair brushed feather light over his now very sensitive skin.

The young girl asked him,

"What are these?"

Her thumbs were making circles around his areoles at the time, and her lips were actually making light contact with the young man's chest, not to mention that his hands were firmly placed on what he had to admit, was one of the great female butts in the world, so he should not be judged too harshly for his reply of,

"Ahhhhh...uuu."

Toph's thumbs and forefingers were now lightly pinching his nipples. Then he felt her small wet tongue run across his left nipple. His last coherent thought ran out his ear and sank into the sand.

"Do they both taste the same?" She asked him.

The beautiful head moved to his right nipple, and he felt the small tip of her tongue circle the areole and then lick the nipple. Chills ran down the fifteen year olds spine. Unable to stop himself his hips bucked. Causing the young girl to laugh, as she was bounced up and down.

Her lips moving against his nipple, the earthbender happily exclaimed,

"They do taste different!" She giggled.

Sokka opened his eyes, he was not sure when he had closed them, and shook his head, trying to clear the sensations which were blocking everything else in his mind. It seemed to work, thoughts seemed to be stirring again. He shook it a second time and the thought came to him,

"Nipples!"

The pretty girl laughed at the word. She lifted her head and told him,

"I have nipples! Do you want to taste mine?"

She reached for her breast band again. This shocked Sokka into action, and he let go of her hips and grabbed her wrists again.

"Everybody has nipples Toph." He blurted out.

"Really?" She asked. Then went on in a sad voice. "Yours don't work, I'm sorry."

"Work?" he asked. Then he realized what she meant, she had not gotten any milk from his nipples. "That's normal, boys nipples don't work, only girls nipples... well breasts and nipples work to feed babies."

"So if we run out of food you can suck on my nipples, and I can feed you." She said as she reached for her chest wrap again.

"No, no only girls who have just had a baby, that's the only time they work." He clarified.

"Oh... so that means we will starve!" she said in a terrified voice.

"No, no, Toph, we have plenty of food, we'll be fine." he reassured her. Then he asked, "Are you ok? I mean are you feeling ok?"

"I'm great!" She said laughing.

He could not see her face since her lovely black hair had fallen forward and was covering it now. He wished he could see her eyes.

"Are you sure no one gave you anything to drink?"

"Yes!" She told him, then she added, "But you're all sweaty."

She laughed at this, and began to slid her hands over his stomach and chest.

"You're wet." She said laughing even more now.

"Yeah, well it's really hot out." He explained.

He knew the heat had nothing to do with why he was sweating at this point, especially since Toph was starting to slide forward and back again on top of him, as she ran her hands over his body.

"I can hear you sweating." She told him.

_Oh yeah, she is totally baked._ He told himself, somehow she must have gotten a dose of "Cactus Juice", and now she was totally fried.

The metalbender began to rub the boy's nipples again.

"Are you sure you don't want to taste my bumps?" she asked him, while her fingers drew circles absently on his stomach.

"No!" he blurted out, then modified it with, "Yeah, I mean, I can't do anything with your boo...mps... ah, bumps."

"You don't like my bumps." She said in a hurt tone.

"No, no, I..."_stay away from the "L" word, _he told himself.

"Toph I would kill to touch your bumps. Really." The young man told his friend.

"Really?" She asked, uncertainty in her voice.

"Yeah really," he tried desperately to convince her.

The fifteen year old boy was having a difficult time focusing on the conversation, what with the beautiful young girl stroking his stomach, while she continued to slide forward and back on his lower abdomen.

"But you've touched 'Pinkle toes' bumps." She accused him.

"That was an accident, Toph." he explained.

The earthbender could feel that the warrior's heart beat did not change when he said that, though it was beating quite rapidly already, which meant the handsome young man was telling her the truth.

"What about Suki's bumps?" She asked him. "I bet you touched and licked hers a lot. You must like hers better than mine."

Sokka didn't know what to tell her. Yes, he had touched and kissed the Kyoshi Captain's breasts. They had made love, and it had destroyed whatever feeling they had had for each other. How could he explain to his best friend, that he could not risk loosing the beautiful young benders friendship over sex.

Toph was just sitting on him now, no longer stroking him with her fingers, no longer sliding back and forth on him. She was just waiting for his answer. Her toes were planted deeply in the sand on either side of the young man. With her heightened bending sense she could feel his heart beat very clearly.

She felt his heart rate slow, and grow steady. Finally, Sokka let go of her waist and took her hands, interlacing her fingers with his.

"Maybe, Toph," he eventually told her in a quite voice. "Maybe... it's not that I like her bumps more than yours... Maybe it's that... I like you more than I ever liked Suki..."

The young girl could tell that he was telling her the truth. She could feel his heart, it was slow and steady. It was her heart that was suddenly leaping about wildly in side her chest. Her breath catching in her throat.

Sokka looked up at Toph, hoping to see her face, just as the tent was torn off of them. The brilliant sun light blinded him, but he could feel Toph being pulled off of him. He could feel her hands being wrenched from his. He could hear her scream as she flew through the air away from him.

The young warrior reached for his weapons, one hand found his boomerang, the other his club. He pushed himself off of the ground, tears streaming from his eyes from the bright light, and ran blindly towards the sound of his best friends voice.

.

* * *

To be continued:

**

* * *

**

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I am back from vacation and here is the next chapter, sorry it took me so long to get it on line, but this is a longer chapter which I hope will make up for the long wait.

Yes, Toph is high on Cactus Juice. I figured her visual cortex was used for her earthbending senses, since she does not use it for visual interpretation from her eyes. I also figured that Cactus Juice effects the visual cortex, therefore I wrote the story from that point of view.

I also figured that the juice would lower some of her inhibitions. I hope she did not come across as out of character.

* * *

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

A big thank you to all those who have taken the time to review this story. You really make a big difference to me and the story. I have tried to respond to all of you directly, if I have missed anyone I am very sorry. I take every review seriously.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	15. Chapter 15

I'll Walk You Home pt 15

Chapter 6

pt. 3

A Desert Dessert

* * *

"SOKKAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Toph screamed as she was pulled through the air. Her long hair was whipping around her face. Her drug abused senses were screaming in protest. She was wrapped in sand tentacles, which had been bent around her, pinning her arms and legs. There were at least two, maybe three benders involved. Since the young girl was the focus of the bending, her own bending sense was completely overwhelmed.

The small earthbender hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of her. She was pushed face down into the sand, and two people knelt on her back and butt, forcing what little air was left in her lungs out. Then there were the hands, large rough hands. The young girl couldn't tell how many there were. The hands pulled a leather band over her eyes, wrenching her head back, and synched the band tight. Her arms were pulled behind her back, a belt was wrapped around her upper arms, and pulled taught. Leather thongs lashed her wrists together. Someone else was on her legs. A strap was wrapped around her upper legs, and tightened, pulling her thighs together, another just above her calves secured her knees together. A long thong tied her ankles, then her feet were pulled back, and her ankles were tied to her wrists, as was the strap around her head. In a matter of seconds the girl was bent backwards, like a tightly strung bow, and she was completely helpless.

"Don't forget the boy!" Toph heard an older male voice shout.

"Don't worry old man," A younger male voice said with disdain, "I've got him."

The metalbender tired to shout, to warn her friend, but after all the rough handling, all she could do was desperately try to get air back into her lungs.

* * *

Sokka ran towards the sound of his young friend's voice. He had his boomerang in his right hand, and his club in his left. He was blinking furiously, trying to clear his eyes of the tears, that had filled them in reaction to the sudden and intense burst of light, when the tent was pulled off of the young girl and himself.

The warrior's eyes were starting to adjust. He could just make out some vague silhouettes on top of a sand dune about forty or fifty paces ahead. He began to run full out towards them, and the young water tribesman could run.

The young swordsman was just thinking that he could try a throw with his boomerang, when a wall of sand rose up directly in front of him. He dodged to the left, and leapt up onto the wall, but his sun dazzled eyes had deceived him. It was not a wall of sand that had risen from the desert floor, but a wave of sand, that was cresting over on top of him. At the last instant he realized his mistake, and turned the jump into a dive, hoping to shoot through the wave, but the sand was too heavy, and he was caught up in the wave. The sand rolled the warrior over and over, as it crashed back onto the desert floor. When the wave finally stopped, the young man was completely buried under the mass.

* * *

The younger male laughed, then shouted,

"I told you I had him, old man!"

Toph felt two rough hands grab her, and push her up onto her side. Her head and feet were pushed back, and her arms felt like they were being pulled out of her shoulders, as the man pushed her back onto her bonds. She could feel his foul breath on her face, as he told her,

"It looks like we interrupted you and your boy friend, back there, but you don't need to worry, you stupid little cunt, he won't tell anyone about it, 'cause I just killed him!"

He followed this with a raucous laugh, and was joined by the rest of the people on top of the dune.

"Oma and Shu!" The same voice exclaimed in disappointment. "She hasn't got any fuckin' tits. Just look at 'em!"

The earthbender felt a hand leave her shoulder, and grab her chest wrap. The wrap was viciously pulled down, exposing her breasts.

"See?" The male voice demanded.

Toph felt a rough hand grab her left breast and squeeze it, hard. It hurt like hell. With her head tied back, it was difficult for the young girl to close her mouth, but she did anyway, gritting her teeth to stop the cry of pain from getting out.

"This cunt isn't going to be worth anything at the market." The hard hand released her breast.

"That just shows how stupid you are Kudret!" The older male said.

"She's young, she's worth more that way. There are men that will pay double for the young ones. And if she's fresh, they'll pay five times as much as they will for a normal girl."

"This cunt's not fresh!" Kudret retorted. "Her little boyfriend has had every hole she's got, more times than I can count."

"Well considering how high you can count," A woman's voice drawled, "She may just be untouched, since I don't think you have the brains to get to one!"

This last was followed by a loud chorus of laughter from everyone.

"Fuckin' bitch." Kudret responded.

"Kudret, you are a master of conversation." The woman's voice responded.

This brought another round of laughter.

"Osman, come here." Kudret then said. "This is your first catch, have a taste."

In a moment Toph felt a smaller hand touch her breast. The hand squeezed, then she felt the forefinger and thumb close onto her nipple, and pinch down viciously. The young girl bit back a gasp of pain.

She heard a vaguely familiar voice say,

"Hi again 'Pretty Lady'" The boy then twisted her nipple, adding, "How do you like my oranges now? Really good aren't they."

He ended by pulling hard, and shaking her breast. The small girl couldn't hold back any longer and gasped in pain. Then Toph heard another familiar sound, it was the whistle of a switch cutting the air, and landing with a loud smack on bare skin. The boy let go of her nipple, and yelped in pain.

"None of that!" The older male ordered. "Mark her and we lose money. No one touches her without my orders! Gozde! When you get a chance, check her over, and shave her clean. I don't want any hair on her except on her head and her eyebrows. That's how they like 'em."

"We can check her now." Kudret said.

The metalbender felt a hand grab the waist band on the side of her shorts, and pull hard. The cord in the band cut into her waist, then finally broke, after which she heard, and felt, the cloth tearing. She felt the side of her pants pulled down exposing her left hip.

There was the sound of the switch again. This time the yelp was from Kudret, as he let go of both the shorts and the girl. Released, Toph rolled onto her stomach, her exposed breasts hitting the hot sand, which sent a shock of pain through her, especially from the "bump" that had just been so roughly handled. She couldn't stop another gasp of pain from leaking through her clenched teeth.

"You son of a bitch, that hurt!" Kudret told the older man.

"What did I just say," The older man responded "Nobody touches her without orders! And that's 'Captain' to you Kudret."

"Aye, aye… Captain." Kudret replied, with ill grace.

Toph's mind was overwhelmed with pain, but those words brought the thought of her friend into the forefront of her mind, and she whispered the name,

"Sokka"

"What was that, little cunt?" Kudret asked, nudging her bare hip with his toe. "Is that the name of your boyfriend? Well don't worry about him 'cause I killed him, remember!"

That was too much for the little earthbender. She spat out,

"It will take a lot more than a stupid asshole like you to kill Sokka of the Southern Tribe. You better pray that he finds you before I get free, because he will just kill you."

Suddenly there was a hand on Toph's shoulder, rolling her onto her side again. The Captain demanded,

"What did you just call him?" There was anger, and fear in the older man's voice, as he asked, "Is he Water Tribe? Answer me!"

"He's Water tribe alright!" Toph shouted, she went on, venting all her fear, frustration, and anger in her voice. "He is Sokka, the greatest warrior of the Southern Water Tribe, Master of Space Sword, friend to the Avatar. He will search you out, and if you are very, very lucky he will only kill you, all of you."

* * *

The young water tribe warrior lay buried in the sand. _Wait_ he told himself. Sand was in his nose and eyes, and ears. He had put his arms in front of his face when he had tried to dive through the "wave", but the sand had gotten through. He had to wait until his inner ear told him which way was up. He had been rolled around in the turbulence, and he had to wait until his sense of balance returned, before he could start to dig his way out.

He soon realized that he was on his back, in a slightly head down position. He also realized that the boomerang in his right hand was heating up. That meant that the top of the weapon was exposed to the sun. He was not buried that deeply, only a few centimeters. He started to push upward with his right arm. It soon broke the surface. The sand was not that heavily compacted, perhaps because of the bending that had been used on it.

The young man switched his grip on boomerang, and using it as a shovel, began to dig out his left arm. With both arms free he began to move the sand away from his face. He had taken a deep breath just before he had hit the sand wave, but it was running out quickly, especially the harder he worked to free himself from this makeshift grave.

Finally he could feel that his head was free. Shaking the sand away, he blew out through his mouth, and took a deep breath of the hot desert air. He panted for a moment. That had been close, but now he could move, and he had air. Now he could dig his way out.

It took the boy at least a full minute to free himself entirely. He knew he had to stay low. If the bender, who had hit him with the wave, knew that he had escaped, he would just bury him again, and do the job right this time. He crawled down slope, until he was sure he was out of sight of anyone on the dune, where he had seen the silhouettes earlier.

The Water Tribe hunter turned his head to the side, and slowly raised it until one eye could see over the top of the new dune. There they were. He counted seven people standing on the dune, including a short one, maybe a boy. They were arguing over a shape on the ground.

"Toph." He whispered.

He could see that one of them, an older man, had a sword slung from his waist, and attached by a thong to his wrist, was a long stick. _Riding crop?_ The boy wondered. Another had a bow and quiver of arrows. The rest were unarmed. _Not good!_ He told himself. That meant at least three, maybe four of them, were benders, plus the boy. Those were very long odds for the fifteen year old fighter.

_I've got to get closer._ The swordsman told himself. He knew that most benders were not very good under five paces. Sokka, with his training, and with the two weapons he had with him, was best at one to two paces, or even closer. He lowered his head, and began crawling towards the enemy group, using every fold of the sand dunes to cover his movement.

The dunes ran north and south, parallel to each other. They were all about the same height, but the valleys between them were of varying depth. The young warrior could feel the warm desert wind on his back. It was coming from the west. The boy now understood, like sea waves, the dunes were perpendicular to the prevailing wind, which apparently here in the desert was from the west.

The wind was picking up, probably due to the increasing heat of the day, as the sun rose higher in the sky. Soon it would be a strong westerly.

In the depressions, or troughs, between the crests of the dunes was the coarser heavier sand and stones. The stones were rounded like heavy pebbles in a stream, scoured and smoothed by the sand and the wind. The young sailor unconsciously noted all this, as he would note the wind, and water conditions if he was on a ship at sea. The hunter in him noted that he would be moving upwind of his prey, which was bad, but he was committed now and could not change his course. He would just have to make due.

* * *

The Captain dropped the small earthbender back onto the sand.

"Gozde!" He ordered, "Give her another dose, a big one. Then you, Bogin, and Koray bring up the sand sleds, and be quick about it!"

"I'll need help dosing her." The woman's voice said.

"Bogin! Help her." The Captain Commanded.

Toph felt hands on her again, as she was rolled onto her side. One set held her up, while someone pinched her nose closed, and shoved the wooden mouth of a water skin between her teeth. She had to swallow or drown, so she gulped down the liquid until she began to cough violently. The juice stopped.

"With that much in her, it will be a day before she can even stand up, let alone bend." Gozde told the crew. "If she even is a bender." The woman added.

"She's a bender alright." Bogin dropping the young girl, told Gozde, "I saw her raise an earthtent outside the village."

"Good!" The Captain said. "You three." He said pointing, "Get the sand-ships, and bring them up here. And do it fast!"

"What about the camp?" Kudret asked. "They've got money, Osman saw it."

"We'll raid the camp once the sleds are up here." The Captain answered heatedly, and then he added, "Now! You three, move!" There was a short pause before the voice said, "Duygu, go check on the Water Tribe boy. Make sure he's dead, if he isn't kill him, and make it quick."

The archer moved off, taking a long route to his left, to avoid having to climb down and up the sand dunes between himself, and where the boy had last been seen.

The Captain began to pace, in agitation. He was worried, very worried.

* * *

Sokka spotted three of the enemy leave the group, they were sand bending their way out to the north. _Good! Three benders gone, but for how long?_ The young hunter continued to move around to the side, trying to get closer to the remaining group. The next time he checked, he saw that the archer was no longer with the group. _Where did he go?_ That's not good, but it did leave just the one probable bender, the boy and the older man standing over Toph. The odds were getting better. He continued to stalk his prey, moving around to his enemy's right side.

* * *

"What are you so worried about?" Kudret asked. His voice full of disdain for the older man.

"Have you ever heard of the 'Dark Ones'?" The Captain asked him.

He looked down at the tied up earthbender, wishing she would just disappear.

"You mean from the children's stories?" Kudret asked, disdain in his voice.

"Stories always have a kernel of truth." The Captain explained, then, pointing to the small earthbender went on, "She said he was Water Tribe. What did she call him, something about the Avatar and a sword. I'll give you one guess what color that sword is."

The older man was interrupted by a shout from the archer,

"'Captain'! The boy is gone. He dug himself out, and I don't see him anywhere."

"Fuck!" Was the Captain's reply, "Why can't anything be easy?" The older man asked the sky.

* * *

Toph lay on her stomach. She was a little girl back in her room, and "Poor Girl" was being beaten. She heard the swish and thwack of every stroke of the cane. Then she was lost and alone, crying in a dark cavern. Then she was falling into the void, falling to her death.

* * *

The water tribesman heard the shout. _Oh crap!_ He thought. He stood up, _Best hit them while their distracted by archer guy._ He aimed at the obvious bender and threw boomerang.

* * *

The Captain looked up. There was a sound he had never heard before, somewhere up in the air. A whirling, spinning sound, then there was the sound of metal on bone, and Kudret cried out, collapsing into the sand.

Duygu called out, pointing,

"Over there!"

* * *

Sokka felt like cheering as boomerang glanced off the benders head, and came back towards him. Then he heard the archer's shout.

* * *

Toph was falling, then a hand reached out and grabbed her hand, and she was pulled up short. She was saved. Boomerang had come back.

* * *

"Shoot him! You idiot! Shoot him!" The Captain shouted at the archer, pointing towards the tribesman.

* * *

The fifteen year old warrior had to wait for boomerang's return, before he could charge. He looked toward the archer, and saw the arrow leave the bow. He knew, almost instantly, that it would be short, and to his right. He had spent a month dodging Mai's arrows at much shorter distances than this, and knew how to read an arrow's flight.

The tribesman turned back to the older man near Toph, just in time to see a sand ball heading for his head. Sokka dodged to the left, away from both the sand bender's attack and the archer's.

He caught boomerang and ducked down behind the crest of the dune. He had thought the older man was a swordsman, but that bending attack had proved him wrong. In his brief look, he had also seen that the "kid" had drawn up two sand whips. _Is everyone in this stinking desert a bender?_ He asked himself.

* * *

The Captain was on guard, waiting for the boy to show himself. He looked to Duygu, and saw that he had finally reloaded another arrow. _What a fool_ he thought, _the man couldn't even nock an arrow quickly._ Then the Captain heard that terrifying whirling sound again. He dropped onto his stomach, and heard the weapon pass over his head. _How did he do that?_ Somehow the boy had thrown his weapon without exposing himself.

* * *

The young warrior smiled as he crouched behind the crest of the dune. He had missed with his throw, but his idea had worked. By throwing at an angle he had sent boomerang out, without having to expose himself over the top of the dune, it had circled around and was now returning below the line of sight of either the archer or the "Old Guy". He caught it, as it flew back to him lower down on the dune's western face. He quickly moved up and peeked over the top of the dune, then ducked down again. _Crap! Crap! Crap!_ He thought.

* * *

The small earthbender was hanging from her friend's hand, hanging over the abyss of nothing, the abyss of eternity. Hanging on, not just for life, but for her soul, hanging on for her one chance at happiness, hanging on to her one chance of living. Tears came to her eyes, she had to tell him. She had to let him know that he was her life, that he was her one chance at living. That he was the one that she loved. She felt her hand slip.

* * *

The Captain heard them before he could see them, and he smiled. They had a chance now. Then the three sand ships rose up over the dune.

These were of a new design, his design. They were larger than the normal sand sleds, having three hulls, not just two. They had a large deck across all the hulls, with a main mast in the center from which a large triangular lateen sail was hung. Even though the new ships were larger than the traditional sand-sailors of the desert tribes, they used the wind more efficiently, and therefore required less sandbending, and they could carry much more.

The Captain began shouting orders.

"Gozde! Bogin! Get the girl on board! Iskander! Muge! Help Osman get Kudret on board. Duygu! Get back to the ship! NOW!"

Now that he had his ships and his crew, the Captain sighed with relief. _Fuck the camp!_ He told himself. They would take their prize and get out of here. She was worth more than anything they could possibly have in their back packs. They would run before the wind and sell her at the great slave market deep in the desert, and he would be a rich man.

* * *

_Remember what Sifu Piandao taught you!_ The young swordsman told himself. He raised his head over the crest of the dune and took a brief look, then closed his eyes and ducked down out of sight. He had had less than a second to take it all in. He kept his eyes closed, holding the picture in his mind, as long as he could, as he examined each part of it.

There were three sand ships, eight, maybe nine crew. _That's a lot of people, most of them probably benders._ The ships were different, _focus on the ships._ They were larger, more like water tribe ships, with real masts in the center. Looking at the picture in his mind, he examined the rigging of the masts. There were ropes to hold the mast up. A forestay, a line from the top of the mast to the short spar at the bow of the ship. There were "ratlines" three on either side, tying the top of the mast to the sides of the ship, there were loops of rope connecting the ratlines to each other which could be used as rungs on a ladder, to allow the crew to climb up onto the mast. Then from the mast top to the rear, fantail, of the ship was a backstay. That rope held the most tension, pulling against the sail, to keep the mast in the ship.

_The backstay!_ That was the weakest part. If he could cut the backstays of the ships, they wouldn't be going anywhere. If the crew raised the sails, the pressure of the wind on the sail, would pull the mast right out of the ships.

The young water tribe sailor opened his eyes, and smiled. He had a plan.

* * *

Toph was falling. There was nothing for her to hold onto, her hand had let go. She had been too frightened to tell him, too frightened that he would reject her, hurt her. She couldn't hold on any longer, and finally, he had slipped away from him. She was falling into the abyss.

She cried out in loss, fear, and overwhelming sorrow,

"SOKKAAAA!"

* * *

"I'll make you scream!" Osman, who was kneeling by his stunned brother, shouted at the prize.

The boy sand bender grabbed a belaying pin, and moved to beat the girl, who had been dumped onto the deck of the ship.

The Captain's switch cut through the boy's hand.

"None of that!" The Captain ordered. "Raise sails! Get under way!" He ordered his crew.

"What's that?" Bogin asked.

The older bender heard it too. It was that damn flying thing again.

"Down!" He shouted, ducking to the deck. "Everybody down!"

He was really starting to hate that fucking water tribe boy.

* * *

Sokka smiled as he counted. He was moving along the reverse slope of "his" dune timing the flight of boomerang. He popped his head up, and saw the sharpened missile cut through the backstay of the middle ship. The one his friend was on. He ducked down again. He had timed it perfectly, and had seen the result of his throw. That ship would not be going anywhere soon.

Replaying the image in his mind, he also noticed an unlooked for result. When boomerang had cut the line restraining the mast, the great wooden pole had shifted forward, and a large earthenware jug, which had been tied to the mast, shifted as well, and water had spilled out of it.

_Of course!_ The young sailor told himself. On water tribe ships, the water was kept in large skins, tied to the mast. You wanted something that heavy in the center of the ship, so as not to throw the balance of the vessel off. On Earthkingdom ships, the water would be kept in a huge earthen jar, in the same location. That jug had been the "scuttlebutt" where the crew kept its drinking water supply.

Almost unconsciously, the boy snatched boomerang out of the air, as it returned to him. He began to look around the trough between the two dunes for stones he could use.

* * *

The water that had splashed out of the scuttlebutt, poured along the deck, hitting Toph as she lay there. The water, although warm, was cold against her skin, as she lay exposed under the hot desert sun. The cold seeped into her. She was lost in a cold void, feeling nothing but her racing heart, hearing nothing, except her own labored breathing. She was cold, lost and so very alone.

* * *

The Captain shouted to his crew,

"Drop that sail! The backstay's been parted. Do you want to pull the mast right out of her?"

In reply his three sailors gave him blank looks.

"Let go of that rope!" He ordered.

The three sand benders released the line holding the luffspar at the top of the sail, which immediately dropped down the mast and crashed onto the deck, smashing the large jug of water. The captain screamed to the sky,

"FUCK!"

He grabbed a coil of rope from the deck, threw his arm through it, and pulled it up onto his shoulder. He ran up the ratline to splice the backstay. They had to get out of here before that damned watertribe boy destroyed his ships.

* * *

Sokka collected five good looking stones from the bottom of the trough, and clutched them to his chest as he ran up the sand slope of the dune. As he was getting ready, he heard the crash and the curse from "Swordy", and smiled. _One scuttlebutt down, two to go._

He placed boomerang and four of the stones in the sand nearby. He hefted the remaining stone in his left hand to get the feel of it. Then, holding his club in his right hand, with the hammer stone uppermost, he stood up, tossed the stone straight up, about head height, then grabbing the club with both hands swung it like a bat. There was a loud thwack as the club struck the stone.

* * *

The water released from the smashed scuttlebutt, ran along the deck, and washed over Toph. She felt the cold wash over her.

She was lying in the snow, on a great ice sheet. She couldn't feel anything around her, since it was ice, but somehow she knew what it was, and that it extended from horizon to horizon. She was naked. Her hands and feet were numb with the cold, and she was shivering as she lay there. Then she heard it.

Something was out there on the ice. Prowling, sniffing, trying to find her.

* * *

"Ow! What the fuck was that?" Muge, the female mate, on the lead ship cried out. Something had hit her in the side, and it had really hurt. She thought she might have a broken rib.

The Captain ignored her, he pulled up the slack backstay, hanging from the mast head, and tied the line he had brought up to it. Holding on to the rope, he swung back down onto the deck.

* * *

_Missed!_ The water tribesman cursed to himself. That was the most powerful way of "Knocking Rocks" he knew, but not the most accurate. It was a game he had picked up from non bending children in the Earth Kingdom.

He took another quick look, then he set himself up for the second method. This was not as powerful, but it was more accurate. It would also reduce his exposure to the enemy. He bent his knees, holding his club in his right hand, the stone in his left. He tossed the stone up, over his head this time, then jumped up, swinging the club over his head, striking the stone, which gave another loud smack. He just let gravity carry him down behind the crest of the dune after that. He smiled when he heard the sound of the stone striking the earthenware jug, followed by the sound of water splashing across the deck of the lead ship.

As he grabbed up boomerang and the remaining stones, he heard, then saw an arrow sail far too high, and very far to the right of where he was. The arrow was immediately followed by an explosion of sand from the top of the dune directly below it. There were dust devils, and sand waves, and sand tentacles. The benders were trying to get him, but unlike Toph, they had to see him to hit him, and luckily for the young warrior, the archer was a terrible shot. The benders were just attacking where they had seen the arrow go. They had no idea where the teen actually was.

The young man moved on to his next attack position. He smiled, this might just actually work. Without sails or water the sand ships were useless. They couldn't move, and they couldn't survive where they were. He could force them to surrender Toph to him, just to make him stop attacking them, and let the ships go.

* * *

Toph, could hear the beast approaching. It was a giant cat like creature. She heard it growl deep in its throat. The growl became words,

"Where are you?" The beast asked. "You filthy little cave troll. You thought you could take him from me. You thought you could steal him from me. But you were wrong. He would never choose an ugly, filthy, little cave troll over me. I would destroy him, before I would let him leave.

* * *

The Captain threw his line around a cleat on the stern of the ship.

"Heave on this line!" He ordered.

When his crew gave him blank looks he ordered them to,

"Pull this rope!"

Once there was tension in the line he secured it to the cleat and ordered,

"Set all sails! Steer…" He paused.

Originally he had planned to run before the wind, but now that they had lost two thirds of their water supply, he would have to replace it and soon. There was only one place he could go.

"Steer nor nor west!"

Then he pointed in the direction he wanted them to go. He had no time for questions from these lubbers.

"Use your bending! Break your backs, you useless dogs! Move! Move! MOVE!" He ordered his crews.

The sand benders took their positions on the ships, and began to swing their arms in great circular motions. The ships began to move.

* * *

Sokka was getting ready to try for the last scuttlebutt, when he heard the Captain's orders. He jumped up, and shot his stone, but it was a clean miss. The ships were picking up speed. He grabbed boomerang, and started to run after them. But it was no use, they were going too fast, and since he had to run up and down the dunes, he had to travel twice the distance to cover any horizontal ground. It was hopeless.

* * *

The small earthbender felt the cold breath of the animal on her face, as it told her,

"I will never let him go."

The girl felt the beast's claws drag down her chest. She felt the claws rake down her stomach, down between her legs. She felt its fangs sink into her breast, ripping and tearing at her heart.

The young girl screamed in agony, and terror.

* * *

The ships were moving again. The Captain thanked Oma and Shu, he had a moving ship under him again. He heard the girl, tied up on the deck scream, he thought about kicking her over the side, just dumping her, to keep the boy off of his stern, but she was the only thing of value they had gotten from this whole cruse. No! They were moving again, he would keep his prize.

"Bend you lubbers!" He shouted at his crew. "Bend like you've never bent before, bend like your lives depend on it. Bend! BEND!"

* * *

Sokka had stopped on the crest of a dune looking after the sand ships as they raced away from him, then he heard Toph scream, and it tore through his heart. He could not abandon his companion, his friend, his love.

He screamed out to her,

"I'm coming Toph, I will find you. If it takes all eternity, I will find you! I will never let you go!"

* * *

To be continued:

**

* * *

**

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I am very sorry that it took me so long to get this up. I hope you will forgive me, and you will keep on with the story. I am rushing to get this up, so I apologize ahead of time for any mistakes (any, that's a laugh, there are going to be a lot).

I am worried that I may have crossed the line, with the rough treatment that Toph suffers in this chapter. I hope I have not offended anyone. These are evil people, and I don't want the reader to have any sympathy for them, I just hope you will forgive me.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

A big thank you to all those who have taken the time to review this story. You really make my day, anytime I see a review posted, and you really make a big difference to the story.

I have been working furiously on trying to get this chapter finished so I have not responded to any of the reviewers for the last chapter. As soon as I get this posted, I will try to respond to you all, if I miss anyone I am very sorry, please forgive me. I take every review seriously.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	16. Chapter 16

I'll Walk You Home pt 16

Chapter 7

pt. 1

The Long Hunt

* * *

Sokka stood and watched as the sand ships receded across the dunes.

"Move!" The hunter said aloud.

The young man turned towards his camp, chose the best route over the dunes and began to run.

This would be a long hunt, he would need supplies and equipment.

The warrior grabbed his pack and dumped the contents onto his blanket. He then added his clothes and equipment. He dressed in moments, adding a Sand tribe headdress he had bought in Ba Sing Se. He also tied on a pair of snow goggles that he had made for the trip. He left his leg brace, his leg throwing knife holsters, and his machete on the blanket. _Too Heavy!_ They would slow him down, and cut down on his endurance.

He strapped on his forearm holsters, boomerang, his club, his skinning knife, and his master's sword. He pulled on his shoulder bag, he would need the food, and personal items in it. He hefted the full, large water skin, and shouldered the strap. After a moment's thought, he grabbed the map case, pulled its strap out, and shouldered it as well.

His pack, and everything else, including all of Toph's possessions, and the partially full water skin, he threw onto the blanket, covered them with the cloak, and threw sand over them, so they wouldn't blow away in the wind, which was freshening.

The young tribesman looked around him, in a full circle, noting land marks so he would be able to locate this spot again.

In just over a minute, from when the ships left, he was ready to start the hunt.

The hunter looked to find the dust cloud raised by the sand ships. It was visible off to the north northwest, where it had been before.

_Chase the head not the tail._

It was a phrase used by hunters in the south. The tribesman remembered it now. It meant that if you chased the tail, you would be going towards where the game had been, and would never catch it. By chasing the head, the hunter was going towards where the game was going to be. It was the only way to actually catch something.

The phrase meant something else as well. It meant that the hunter had to know how the game thought. That way he could anticipate what the prey would do, where it would go, and get there first, to set his trap.

Sokka pulled his copy of the ancient map out, and searched it. The ships were heading nor, nor-west. He could find nothing out there for them. If they wanted to return to the village, they would have steered due north. With the way the ships were rigged, with lateen sails, that would not have been a problem for them.

The young hunter rubbed the back of his neck in thought.

_What do I know about him?_ He asked himself, referring to the Captain of the sand benders. _Nothing!_ He thought. No, that was not quite true. The teen knew that the Captain carried a sword, even though he was a sand bender. What did that tell the tribesman? It told him that the Captain had spent time, probably a lot of time, away from his element, and had to rely on normal weapons, and not his bending.

_At sea!_ Of course the man had spent a lot of time at sea, with no sand to bend, he carried a sword. From the speed that he had spliced the back stay, to the language the young hunter had heard him use, when giving orders to his crew, to the configuration, and rigging of his ships, the Captain had to be a real seaman, a sailor.

That meant he sailed by the wind not by sand bending. _What does that tell me?_ It told him that the Captain was not going north, north-west, he was actually going due west, but in order to get there he had to tack back and forth, steering a zig zag course. The young seaman knew that no sailing ship could sail directly into the wind. The Captain would sail north north-west then tack west south-west, then west north-west, and so forth till he got to where he wanted to go.

_Great! So where does he want to go?_ Sokka examined the map again. There was nothing to the west, until you hit the main route across the desert, but it would be crowded with Earth Kingdom troops returning to Ba Sing Se, and the Captain would avoid that at all costs.

There was nothing to the west except,

"That stupid ancient fort!" the boy cried out in frustration.

_But the ancients weren't stupid._ He told himself. Everything he had learned about the ancients told him that they were a practical, hard headed people. They wouldn't build a fort, and a road to it for no good reason. There had to be something there that they wanted.

"What?" The boy asked.

It couldn't be for defense. It was too isolated, and too far from the road._ What else? _He asked himself. _Water!_ Of course, there must be a well there. The ancients built the fort to protect the well, and the road to bring the water to the main road for their troops. That must be where the Captain was going. He was low on water. He needed to replenish his supply before he could do anything else. That had to be it.

Sokka rolled up the map, and put it away. He uncorked the water skin and drank mouthful after mouthful, until his stomach was full. He took one last gulp of water, and held it in his mouth. Then he shouldered the water skin, and walked out onto the ancient road facing north. Using the road would be faster than going across the dunes. He tied the snow goggles on and started his run.

His plan was to run north on the main road, until he came to the side road out to the small western fort, then he would take that road to what he believed to be the well. _What if you're wrong?_ He asked himself. _Then I will go on, until I find her, and free her. No matter how long it takes._

As the young hunter ran he held the water in his mouth. It was an old training exercise that all the boys of the tribe went through. You had to hold a gulp of water in your mouth, while you ran three thousand paces. At the end, you had to spit the water out. This taught you discipline, in that you didn't drink the water, and it forced you to breathe through your nose. In the extremely cold, arid air of the Antarctic, breathing through your mouth, would dry your lungs out, and could even freeze them. The young warrior thought the same would be true here, in the dry air of the desert.

The young man let his stride lengthen, until his long legs began to eat up the milles.

* * *

The sun had not climbed that much higher in the sky, by the time the hunter slowed, and stopped at the junction of the two roads. He swallowed his mouthful of water. He lifted his snow goggles from his eyes, and set them onto his forehead. He searched the northern horizon for the dust cloud raised by the sand ships. He could not find it.

_Another failure_

_mother_

_father_

_Yue_

_Suki_

_And now Toph_

_Not Toph, please not Toph._

The teen searched again. Looking farther east and west this time.

_Oh please no,_

_You always fail,_

_Please be there,_

The young man's heart began to pound in his chest.

_You guessed wrong_

_No!_

_You always guess wrong_

_You always fail_

_Useless_

_Worse than useless_

_You fail them all_

_Everyone you love _

_You fail them all_

_They depend on you_

_And you betray them_

_You fail_

_Again_

_And Again_

_And Again_

"_I didn't count you, you know, no bending and all"_

_and Again_

_All the way back to your birth_

_You couldn't even be born without failing_

"_Your sister is the future of the tribe"_

_You, obviously, are the end of the tribe_

_Just give it up_

_Just lay down and die_

_It will be the best for everyone_

_no more disappointment_

_no more hurting those you love_

_no more disappointing everyone around you_

_just give up_

_just stop_

_just lay down_

_just die _

_._

_._

_._

"move" the boy spoke the word aloud.

_and do what_

"move"

_so you can fail again_

"move"

_why_

"Because it is Toph. The least I can do is try."

The hunter wiped the tears from his eyes, and searched the horizon again. _Yue, help me!_ He prayed. _Please help me!_

He searched and searched, and there..., maybe..., maybe..., it could be, farther to the west than he had thought, there was something. Yes..., yes..., something..., something.

"Thank you Yue!, Thank you."

It was a small dust cloud. These ships didn't raise a large cloud like the small, normal, sand sleds did. These ships used the wind, they did not create the wind using dust devils, the way the sand tribes did.

The cloud was farther to the west than he had expected. _He's tacked to the west, probably west south-west!_ _Yes!_

Sokka pulled the heavy water skin off of his shoulder, and gulped down more water. He held the last gulp in his mouth. Shouldered the skin, pulled down his goggles, turned, and began his run down the branch road to the west.

* * *

The sun was sinking towards the western horizon. The dust cloud to the north was much closer now, and just ahead, the hunter could see the low ruins of the ancient fort.

The water skin was lighter now. He had drunk about a third of the water. He had eaten a few pieces of jerky, while running here. His left leg felt like it was on fire, but he kept going.

The warrior slowed, as he approached the end of the road. He could see tracks of sand sleds, and the prints of bare feet in the sand. They were old sign, softened by the wind, but this area was obviously used by the sand tribes.

The run here had given him time to plan. He sat down and put on his sand shoes, they had been tied to his shoulder bag. The tracker moved off the road onto the sand dunes. He moved to the south to set up his blind. He would have preferred to have set up to the East, downwind of the ruins, but the south would have to do.

The hunter moved about four hundred paces south of the ruins, he looked around, found a good spot for his hide. He dropped his gear, and dug in to the reverse slope of the saddle back, between two dunes. He could watch the ruins from here, without being seen.

Once the blind had been completed, he began his preparations. He pulled his master's sword from its scabbard. He removed the canvas from the hilts and grip. The furniture of the sword was chased in gold leaf. The blade was bright steel. His plan was to move into the enemy camp, if they made camp, during the night. The sword would catch any light there was, and give him away.

The warrior pulled his "writing desk" from the map case. It was a leather roll with paper, the letters he had been working on, an ink block, and writing brushes. He pulled the ink block, and put the rest away. He pulled out his shoulder bag next. From the bag he took his grease pot, which he normally used for cooking, and a greasy rag. Then he put the bag away.

Using the rag, the swordsman, mixed grease with the ink, and spread a thin coat of the black mixture, over the blade, and hilts of the sword. He had made a promise to himself that he would return the sword to its owner, in perfect condition. But now he had to save Toph. He would throw the sword away, just as he had done with space sword, if he had to, to save his friend.

Once he had finished with the sword, he undressed, removing his breach cloth, using water from the skin, he soaked the cloth, then he rubbed it on the clean side of the ink block. Once the white cloth was fully blackened, he laid it out on the sand to dry.

His plan was to infiltrate the sand benders camp, find Toph, and sneak her out. Once he could get her away, and free of the cactus juice, there would be nothing the sand benders could do. His friend was the greatest bender that had ever been. She would be able to take all the enemy benders out without a problem. He assumed that they had her in some sort of wooden cage, or else she would have already freed herself.

The fifteen year old warrior, would sneak into the camp in just his newly blackened loin cloth. His own brown skin would hide him in the darkness of the night. He would wear his throwing dagger holsters, since they were the same color as his skin, and the knives and darts, were also browned to match his skin tone. His only other weapon would be his now blackened sword. Without his white belt he had no easy way to carry his other weapons, and it would take too much ink, and grease to darken them all. Besides he needed stealth to get into the camp, and he would have to carry his friend out of the camp. He did not want to be burdened with too many weapons. He could not carry the scabbard for the sword, if Spring Rain got in his way while carrying his friend, he would just abandon it.

The hunter was kneeling, naked, in his hide when he heard the sand ships. He snuck a look at the ruins, and saw the three ships run in. He had been right.

"Thank you, Yue." The young man whispered, in heartfelt gratitude.

The sun was just touching the western horizon. The sand benders brought the ships in, lining them up in a semi circle to the west of the ruins. The crew dropped the sails, and began to set up camp.

Sokka could not find Toph. He could not find a cage of any type. He thought they must have her below decks somewhere. He saw that the benders looked exhausted. The Captain must have had them at it all day.

As the tired crew went about setting up the camp, the Captain shouted out,

"Bogin! Koray! Kudret! Iskander. Repair the scuttlebutts, and get them filled. Muge! Duygu! Get some food started! The rest of you set up camp."

Sokka ducked down into his blind. He took off his choker, putting it into his shoulder bag. Taking the grease pot and the ink block, he began to put on his war paint. The tribesman did not have his war paints, he had left them back in the camp. Using the grease and ink, he painted his face with the ravening wolf's head that was the mark of his clan. He also smeared dark lines on his chest, stomach, and legs. Without a mirror, or the proper paints, he was not sure how well he had done the job, but it would have to do.

It had been almost forty hours since the teen had had any sleep. He found, as he waited, that if he wasn't moving, his eyes would shut, and he would nod off. So he kept moving.

The warrior watched the enemy crew through the early evening. There were nine of them, counting the boy, who was probably only ten or eleven years old. There were at least six benders, one had a bandage on his head, the brother of the boy, he was the one Sokka had hit with boomerang, that morning.

The teen saw where the well was hidden in the center of the old fort. Those ancient Roamers really knew how to build. From the distance he was from them, he could not hear the sand benders conversations, but he could tell that they were an unhappy and tired crew. The Captain had to do a lot of shouting to keep them moving.

Once the sky had darkened, the young fighter tied on his breach cloth. He tied the waist band tight, then instead of just slipping the loin cloth through the waist band, he tied both ends to the belt. He was girding his loins for battle.

Sokka could see that the crew had not set out any blankets or sleeping mats. That was a bad sign. It meant the enemy planned to either leave after resting, or to sleep on their ships. Either way, the young warrior had to change his plans. He would have to find Toph, he still had not seen her, and then get her out, before the crew went to sleep.

The young hunter, drank a last, long swallow of water, took up his blackened sword, and began his stalk. Staying low and using the terrain, he moved off to the west.

He would have preferred to come into the camp from downwind, but he needed to get to the ships, which were on the western edge of the camp. He would be up wind of the game, but as the sun had gone down, the wind had also died, and was now only a light breeze. Besides humans were not very good at smelling out other humans, and the stink from the ships, as well as their bulk, should hide him.

The light wind also meant that the sand benders were probably going to stay the night. Though there was no guarantee, they were benders after all, they could move the ships without a wind if they had too.

Once the hunter was due west, he began to move in towards the ships. The crew had built a big fire in an old fire pit, and they were sitting around it, eating and talking. The light of the fire should blind them to anything out in the dark of the desert. Especially a dark skinned water tribesman.

As Sokka got closer, he could begin to understand the conversations of the crew. He ignored most of it until he heard the woman bender say,

"Our little prize is no sailor. She was throwing up all over herself, the entire time we were running over the dunes."

That brought laughter from the rest of the crew. Those who don't get sea sick have no sympathy for those that do. The young water tribe sailor, knew that his friend had no tolerance for ships. She hated them, and was always sea sick whenever she was on board one. _Poor Toph_ he thought _messed up on cactus juice and on a ship_. He had noticed that the sand ships moved just like normal ships plowing through a heavy sea.

"Wait it gets better." Gozde, the female bender said. "She also pissed herself."

This brought new laughter.

The young hunter moved up to the western side of the middle ship. This was the ship that the captain had been on, and the tribesman knew the Captain would not allow his prize out of his sight for long.

"Since she puked up that last dose." The captain said. "You should give her another one tonight. Tomorrow you and Muge, clean her up, and no razors, pull any cunt hairs out. They'll give her a close inspection, and they better not find any nicks or cuts. She's small, if you do a good job, we may be able to pass her off as only eight or nine. She'll fetch a high price then."

"Aye, aye, Captain." Gozde replied.

"Hey talking about doses." Kudret said. "How about a little medicinal dose for me. I'm injured." And he pointed to the bandage on his head.

"Hey me too." Muge, the one other woman in the crew, said.

"None for any of you." The Captain ordered. "I want you all thinking straight, till we get to the market and sell the girl. After that I won't care what you do."

That brought a cheer from the crew.

"Let me see?" Asked Gozde, standing up, and moving to the non bender.

"What was that thing that was flying around?" Iskander asked.

"According to our fearless Captain," Kudret answered, sarcasm dripping from his words. "It was one of the magic weapons of the Dark One."

This brought a nervous laugh from the crew. Sokka stopped and listened.

"Well I wasn't hit by that flying thing," Muge said, while unwrapping her sash. "But whatever it was, it hurt like hell."

"That flying thing was like one of the magic weapons in the stories." Duygu, the archer, said. "It kept coming back to him."

"And she said he was water tribe." Osman added.

"Southern water tribe." Confirmed Kudret.

"Do you really think he is one of the Dark Twins?" Bogin asked the Captain.

"I don't think anything!" The Captain answered testily. "I just don't like taking chances is all."

"The stories say" Koray added in a slightly spooky voice, as if he was telling a ghost story. "That on nights with a full moon, the girl can bend the blood in your veins, and that the boy can turn into a giant wolf."

"Yeah!" Duygu added. "But he can change on any night with a moon, 'cause the moon is his lover, and even on nights like this, with only a partial moon, he can still change, becoming half man half wolf."

"The songs say she has seduced the Avatar, and the Fire Lord." Iskander added his part to the story.

"Well from what I saw of him, in that loin cloth," Gozde said in a throaty voice. "He can seduce me anytime."

That got a laugh from the others.

"From what I could see under that cloth." Muge added, grabbing her own crotch, mimicking holding a large bulge under her hand. "He could seduce both of us, not just anytime, but all the time."

This brought an even louder laugh from the crew.

"I can't see anything this way." Gozde told Muge. "You'll have to take that off."

"Ok" Muge said.

She had been pulling up the side of her top. Now she untied it and pulled it off revealing her full breasts to the crew.

"I should charge you a silver piece each for the show." The large breasted woman said.

There were shouts, whistles, and cries of delight, and even one proposal of marriage, from the male members of the crew at the display.

Gozde, who was the only one to do so, examined the large bruise on the other woman's ribs.

"Does this hurt?"

"Like hell!" Muge answered.

"I don't think any thing's broken." Gozde said.

"Neither do I." Koray added.

"Looks perfect from here." Iskander shouted.

Muge opened her top wider and shook her breasts at the men. Then she gasped in pain.

Sokka took the opportunity of the distraction to covertly climb onto the ship. He lay down on the deck, and looked around him. He didn't see Toph anywhere.

"You may have a cracked rib." Gozde said. "Take it easy for a week or so."

"Well if your finished with Muge." The Captain told Gozde. "Get to work on the girl. Dose her up good for the night."

"Aye, aye Captain Serkan." The woman replied.

She picked up her water skin, and started walking towards the ships.

"Can I help?" Osman asked, joining her.

"They say the moon gave him his magic weapons." Duygu went back to the story of the Dark Ones. "A magic club that always comes back to him, and a sword as black as his heart."

"You can help." The woman told the boy, then she punched him in the head adding, "But you can only help me. No grabbing or poking. She's worth too much."

"That's because the moon spirit is his lover." Iskander amplified on Duygu's comment.

The discussion of the Dark ones continued around the fire, as Gozde and Osman walked up to the center ship.

The young hunter squatted down behind the mast. He planned to let the woman show him where his friend was. Then once they went back to the fire, he would release Toph, and sneak her out of the camp.

"If he was the Dark King" Koray joined the talk at the fire. "That would mean our little prize is the True Daughter of Oma and Shu, The Blind Queen. If that were true, just think of how much she would be worth."

The woman and the boy had reached the side of the ship near the mast across from Sokka. She reached out, and grabbing hold of a tarp near the side, she threw it off, revealing the small earthbender to the tribesman.

The young man had not seen his friend before. He had been looking for some sort of cage. But he saw her now, in the moon light. He saw how she had been bound. Bent back, head, hands, and feet. He saw how her clothes had been torn off, exposing her, with only her loin cloth still covering her. He saw how her breast was red and bruised. He saw how she was covered in her own dried vomit and piss. The stench of it hit him, now that the tarp had been thrown off of her. He looked down on the girl he loved. The warrior stopped thinking, and began to move.

* * *

Gozde thought she saw something move near the mast. She looked up, and saw the silhouette of something against the night sky. Then she was spinning and falling. She hit the ground hard, but she didn't really feel it. She was looking up at the sky. There was a red mist in the air. She heard Osman screaming. There was a dull thud nearby, as something heavy hit the ground. She saw a dark shape jump through the mist, and she was left looking at the sky. The stars were beautiful. She watched, as they faded…, faded…, until they were all gone, and she was left in absolute blackness.

* * *

Osman didn't know what it was. A demon, a ghost, he just ran screaming out his terror.

* * *

Sokka was running to the fire. He shifted the sword to his left hand and pulled a throwing knife out with his right. The crew by the fire was standing up. He ducked his head down and to the right, and hit the first man with his left shoulder, continued running and jumped over the fire.

* * *

Koray stood up, but something hit him hard, in the center of his chest. He was knocked off his feet and driven backwards into Kudret. The two went down in a jumble of arms and legs.

* * *

Iskander saw a shape, dark against the night leap over the fire towards him. The light of the fire showed him the face of the thing. It was the face of a wolf. He froze in terror.

* * *

When Bogin heard Osman's scream he jumped up and took a stance. He began to raise a sand wall in front of him, but before he was able to get it out of the desert floor, he saw a dark shape coming over the fire towards him. Then pain exploded throughout his body. It was as though he had been struck, in his abdomen, by lightning. The pain was crippling, and he dropped to the ground screaming, clutching at the center of the pain.

* * *

Osman had not stopped, he ran screaming, through the ring of sand benders into the night.

* * *

The Captain saw the dark shape leap across the fire. He heard Bogin scream. He saw Iskander go down. He could not see any weapon in the shape's hands. Falling back on old habits, the Captain drew his sword.

* * *

As the young warrior leapt over the fire he threw his knife at the bender to his right. He was aiming for the second chakra, half way between the navel and the crotch. All chi passed through the second chakra. By piercing it he would disrupt all chi flow in the bender.

As he landed, he drove his steel covered left forearm into the face of the man in front of him. Smashing the nose, and knocking the man off his feet.

The tribesman heard the sound of a sword being drawn to his right. Instinctively he moved towards the sound. With both hands he swung his black blade against the silver one in the Captain's hand. The second greatest blade in the world shattered the blade of the older man.

Sokka let his sword continue its swing, then drove the pommel of the weapon into the forehead of the Captain, stunning him, and driving him to his knees.

The young man turned and jumped across the flames to the other side of the ring.

* * *

Duygu did not know what was happening. He tried to pick up his bow, which was unstrung. He looked up, and saw a demon wolf, covered in blood, leaping out of the flames of the fire at him. He dropped the bow, and trying to back away from the monster, he tripped over the stone he had been sitting on. He scrambled onto his hands and knees, crawling as fast as he could, away out onto the desert, and into the night.

* * *

Sokka turned away from the archer towards the bender with the bandage on his head. The man had just gotten out from under the first man the young warrior had struck coming into the ring. The bandaged man drew up a sand whip. The swordsman made a two handed lunge at the bender, in order to distract his opponent. Any fighter would be able to dodge such a simple attack. But it would break the bender's stance and give the tribesman time to turn, and strike him with the side of the pommel.

* * *

Kudret roughly pushed Koray off, and stood. The dark figure was suddenly in front of him. He drew up a sand whip. The light from the fire showed him the outline of the beast, but he could only see the vaguest shape in the things hands.

* * *

Sokka completed the lunge. He felt a light, momentary resistance then the blade continued on into the bender's chest. It was a perfect thrust. The swordsman had done it thousands of times in training. It slipped in between two ribs, just left of center of the man's chest, then it angled in, piercing the heart. Sokka could feel the vibration of the bender's heart run down the length of the blade into his hands, as it beat out its last. The fifteen year old saw the look of complete surprise on the face of the man he had just killed.

The young warrior felt something wrap around his throat, and begin to choke him. It was a bolas lasso of the sand tribes. He twisted the sword, and pulled it out of the dead man, as the dead bender collapsed onto the ground. The tribesman jumped towards the direction of the pull of the lasso, while pulling out a senbon dart with his right hand.

As he turned, the swordsman felt a sand whip close on the vambrace on his left forearm. He saw that it was the Captain, back on his feet, and now using his sandbending. Sokka changed his attack mid jump, throwing the dart at the Captain. The spike impaled itself in the older man's right forearm, disrupting the bending chi. The sand whip collapsed, as the Captain cried out in pain.

* * *

Muge had got him. Her lasso was around the demon's neck. She pulled hard to choke it, but there was no resistance. The blood covered beast was coming straight towards her. She saw the visage of the man/wolf as it shouted its war cry. With nothing to pull against she started to fall backwards, when something struck her hard on the exposed skin of her chest. It drove the air out of her, knocking her down onto her back. In terror she raised her arms over her face to block out the vision of the beast, knowing that her death was less than a second away.

* * *

Sokka smashed the pommel of his sword into the woman's chest, driving her to the ground. Instinctively he felt/saw something coming at his head. He slashed at it with his sword. It was another lasso that he had just cut out of the air. It had been thrown by the man with the smashed nose. The swordsman advanced on the sand tribesman, who turned, and ran for his life into the darkness. The watertribe warrior looked to the Captain, who was pulling the dart from his arm. Using his left hand the teen pulled a knife, and threw it at the older man. It struck with a hard sound, imbedding itself in the muscle and bone of the older man's left shoulder. The impact turned the Captain slightly, and caused him to grunt in pain.

Across the fire Sokka saw the bender, who had been on the ground rise up on a sand wave, trying to flee. The teen switched the sword to his left hand, and pulled another senbon with his right. It flew perfectly, striking the fleeing bender at the base of the spine, piercing his earth chakra. The sand wave collapsed. The bender screamed, as a wave of disrupted chi lashed his body. The bender struggled to his feet, and stumbled out into the night.

The warrior turned to the woman, who had been on the ground, but she was gone. The tracks in the sand told the story of her terrified flight. He looked for the bender he had hit with his first knife, the bloody knife lay on the sand, and a red trail leading into the darkness told of his flight.

The fifteen year old man looked around the camp. The only enemy left was the Captain, who was standing looking lost, blood running down both arms.

Sokka had never felt so alive in his short life. Adrenaline was roaring through him. His body was moving before he could even think. It was reacting perfectly, responding to his every need. He could not miss. He sang out his war cry. Not the lonely howl of the lone wolf, but the high piercing, yipping cry of the pack, closing in for the kill. The young man, for once in his life, was perfect.

It had taken Sokka twelve seconds to wipe out the Captain and his crew.

* * *

Serkan, once captain of the three finest sand ships in the world, his own personal fleet, looked into the blue eyes of the Dark One before him. There was no doubt in the sand bender's mind. This was truly the Brother, the Dark King of the South, one of the Twins of Doom, sent by Tui and La to destroy the world.

The broken man turned, and walked out into the desert to die, in darkness and despair.

* * *

Sokka stood for a moment, looking around him. He didn't want it to be over. He wanted more, more enemies to defeat, more men to kill, more foes to flee in abject terror, more commanders to be broken, and walk away in defeat. It was over far too soon for the young warrior.

The teen felt an ache in his groin. He looked down to find that he was extremely erect, it had pushed its way up under the tight waist band of his loin cloth. He laughed at the thought, and pushed it into a more comfortable position.

* * *

Fatigue began to crawl up the young man's legs. He had gone without sleep for two days now. He had walked, or run forty thousand paces. He had fought two battles, against impossible odds. The teen was finding it hard to support his weight. He knees felt like jelly.

Then he remembered, and all fatigue left him.

"Toph!" the young man cried out.

The warrior ran towards where he had last seen his friend, the girl he loved.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I sure hope this chapter works for everyone.

A little more info on the Dark Ones, I will explain it all by the end of the story.

At least I got it up on time, only a week from my last chapter.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

A big thank you to all those who have taken the time to review this story. You really make my day. I can't tell you of the relief I felt, when I saw all the positive reviews for the last chapter. I was really worried it had not worked.

I was unable to reply directly to the following reviewers, for one reason or another, so I would like to take this opportunity to reply to you.

To: Dex; Please forgive me for not responding in my last author's notes. It was an oversight on my part. I was rushing to get chapter 15 up, and forgot to thank you for your very encouraging words on chapter 9. I hope you are still hooked, and more importantly still reading.

To: The1WhoIsntThere; Thank you very much. My wife the teacher was not happy with the knowledge that you were reading during your lecture, but I was very happy to hear that you were enjoying the story.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. Please give him a read and a review.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	17. Chapter 17

I'll Walk You Home pt 17

Chapter 7

pt. 2

The Long Night

* * *

Sokka vaulted up onto the deck of the ship, set his sword to the side, and knelt down by the young girl's side. He forced himself to look at her, fear coursing through him, until he heard a ragged breath escape her mouth. She was still alive.

"Toph it's me, Meathead!" He told her.

He reached out towards her, but held his hand back from making contact. Touching her would make what he was seeing real, and that frightened him. Finally, with great gentleness he touched her shoulder, and told her,

"Toph... it's ok now. It's all over, your safe now."

The young girl gave no response, except for the same ragged breathing he had heard before. _Unconscious_, he told himself.

Pulling a throwing knife, the warrior gently took hold of the strap holding the young earthbender's head back, and cut through it. He held onto the strap, and slowly released the tension, letting her head move into a more natural position.

Next he did the same with her feet, releasing them from where they had been tied to her hands, and slowly letting them move into a more comfortable position.

Finally he cut the thongs binding the girl's wrists together. He had to be very careful not to cut her wrists, as he did it, since the bindings were so tight.

After he had gotten her hands free, he cut all the rest of the restraints. The small earthbender, still unconscious, curled into a fetal position on her side. Curling in on herself. The young man was rewarded with the sound of easier breathing, and a small moan from his friend.

_Now what? _The Warrior was at a loss. He felt helpless and alone, he wished his sister was with them. Katara could heal their friend. He only had to look at the angry red welts, that had been cut into the small girl's wrists and ankles by the thongs used to tie her, to know that healing would be needed.

The stench of vomit and urine hit the tribesman again, as he knelt by his friend. He had to move her, the deck under her was filthy, she was filthy, and with her clothes torn, he would need something to cover her. He looked around him on the ship, for something he could use. He saw the aft cabin on the main hull of the tri-hulled ship.

The young warrior was torn at first. He hated the idea of leaving his young friend alone for any amount of time. Now that he had found her, he was afraid if she was out of his sight for even an instant, he would lose her again. Finally he forced himself to move. He couldn't just kneel there and do nothing to make her more comfortable.

The cabin took up the aft end of the hull. Three quarters of it were below decks, the one quarter above deck had windows on three sides, and the roof made up the quarter deck of the ship. There was a ship's ladder leading down to the door into the compartment.

The water tribe sailor jumped down the steps, and threw open the door. This was obviously the captain's cabin, with an actual bed, all be it, a small one, a dresser, with a mirror and two glow crystals in stands on top, a desk, and a wash stand. The small room was very crowded.

The young man began to tear the spread, blankets, and sheets from the bed, when he stopped himself. _Think!_ He told himself. He pushed his fear and anxiety down. _What do I want to do?_ He asked himself. Once he had answered that question, then he could make a plan. With a plan he was able to act.

While the warrior was grabbing the glow crystal stands from the dresser, he saw his face for a moment in the mirror. He was surprised at the face that stared back at him. It was not the face he expected. The blue eyes were hard, the face painted into that of the hunting wolf. And over all was a fine coating of dried blood, not red, but black in the green light of the crystals. He had no time for this, he threw the stands onto the bed and moved on.

In less than two minutes the fighter was back on deck with his bundle. He needed to move the young girl off of the filthy deck, but where. He thought about the cabin and its bed, but rejected it. She should be in contact with her element, that way when she came to, she would be able to use her bending to "see", and realize she was now safe.

The water tribe sailor picked up his sword, and with his bundle, jumped down over the side of the ship onto the sand. He set up a small camp, spreading out a sheet to put his friend on, the glow crystals in their stands at the head. He set out the basin, pitcher, towels, soap, and wash cloths. The rest he left bundled in the blanket and bed spread, off to the side.

As the warrior turned back to the ship to get his friend, he saw the body of the woman he had killed. It was already beginning to draw flies, and even though Toph would not be able to see it, she would be able to feel it when she regained consciousness. He would have to drag the body away, he should also drag the other body away as well.

Once again the fighter was torn. He hated the idea of leaving his friend for even the shortest time. But it would be better to at least move the bodies before she came to.

Sokka walked over to the dead woman. With his left hand, he grabbed the head by its hair, and picked it up, with his right, he grabbed hold of one of the body's wrists, and began to drag it into the low ruins twenty to thirty paces to the east.

* * *

The raiding party of the Hammi tribe had seen the light of a camp fire at the ancient well. The ruin was called, The Well of the Spirits, or sometimes the Well of Ghosts. The well was very old. It was neutral ground to the tribes, all were allowed to use it freely. But not all the people of the Great Si Wong were of the tribes.

Scouts, four young boys, were sent ahead, while the sand sleds with the rest of the hunters were held back.

The scouts approached with caution, they were coming from the west, they would have preferred the east, but this was a preliminary, long range scout. Gushin, the eldest at fourteen, was the leader of the scout, and as soon as he could make out the three ships in the dim moon light, he sent the youngest back to warn the main party. These ships were unique in the desert, these were the ships of Serkan the slaver, who called himself "The Captain". He was of no tribe and very dangerous.

The young sand bender then led the two remaining boys on a long wide run, first to the north then to the east. He would approach the camp from the safer direction, now that he knew who was there.

Once they were east of the ruins Gushin pulled out his signal string. It was a long, thin, strong, silk string, dyed black. The three boys would use it to signal one another silently. He spread the scout out in a line running north to south. Gushin would be on the northern, right hand end. His brother Sah-id, would be in the center, and Ashad would be on the left. The line was about sixty strides long. Crouching low, so they could look for sign in the sand, the three boys moved into the ruins.

All three soon found sign. Gushin found the foot prints of a boy running as fast as he could away to the northeast. Ashad found foot prints and a blood trail going towards the southeast. The blood was dry, but the ants and flies had not found it yet, so it was still fresh, less than an hour old. Sah-id found sign of a small man, or more likely a woman, wearing shoes, so probably not a bender, running east as fast as she could.

The boys moved forward cautiously, something terrible had happened at the Well of the Spirits this night.

The bright fire that had alerted the Hammi to the occupation of the well, had by now burned down to coals, and gave only a small glow to the area. The scout moved forward on their stomachs, slowly to make as little noise as possible. They searched using the dim moon light. All three boys saw the body lying by the dying fire, then to their left, they saw the dark spirit walk out of the ruins.

* * *

Sokka walked over to the man's body, he leaned down and grabbed the wrist of the dead man. He felt a bracelet on the wrist. He looked at it, and saw that it was Toph's black space metal armlet. Anger ran through the young warrior when he saw this. He wanted to kill the man again. Then he heard something in the ruins to the east. He dropped the arm, and drawing two knives he turned and ducked down, taking advantage of a slight dip in the sand, looking out for a target. Perhaps one of the crew had returned.

* * *

All three boys stopped breathing. Fear ran up their spines and over their skins. The Dark Spirit had disappeared right before their eyes. They waited not moving, not breathing, afraid to blink.

* * *

The hunter waited for a sign. Finally his fear for his friend over rode his caution, and he stood, jogging back to where she lay on the white sheet. He sheathed his knives, and picked up his sword. He stood, his back to the glow crystals, looking into the night, on all sides.

* * *

The boys saw the spirit rise up out of the sand. It was in the form of a man, naked, with the face of a man and also of a wolf, covered in dark dried blood. Then the spirit moved away, and the boys could breathe again. Gushin signaled through the sting to _retreat, quietly_, but almost immediately signaled, _stop, silence_, as the dark spirit drew a weapon up from the sand and looked out at them again.

The spirit was now just a dark silhouette against the green light of the glow crystals, with a black sword, that seemed to eat the moon light that fell on it. It was now that the scouts saw the form lying on the white sheet in the crystals' light.

It was a young girl, white in the combination of moon and crystal light. The spirit stood guard over her, challenging the night.

* * *

Sokka cried out the challenge of a brave of the wolf clan, into the desert. It was high pitched and staccato, except for the last syllable which was long and faded slowly.

When no answer came, the young warrior returned to the dead man, still on alert, and carrying his sword. He pulled the armlet off of the wrist, and put it on his own right wrist. Then as he was about to drag the body off he stopped, and stood up. He had just realized that he had not sung a death song for this man. Every kill has a death song or prayer that must be sung for it, or else its spirit will not be quiet, and move on to the spirit world. The young warrior had never been taught the death song for humans, Hakoda, his father, had left home before he had taught his son the warriors' songs.

Perhaps the war chief of the southern tribe had hoped that his son would not become a killer of men. Perhaps, in his grief, Hakoda had just forgotten. Sokka believed that his father had no faith in the skill, and courage of his son. The young warrior believed, that the war chief thought his son would never be good enough to need to know those songs.

For whatever the reason, the young man had now killed, and needed to do something about it. The young brave decided, he would have to make up his own death song for those he had killed. Then when he returned home, he would have to have a shaman, an Angekkok, perform the enemy ceremony for him, no not just one, at least three. One for this man, one for the woman, and one for Combustion Man, his first kill, that would be very expensive, and would require at least three tiger-seals, to pay the shaman, and to feed the guests.

Sokka thought for a moment then began his song for the enemy dead. The tribesman sang in the old language of the water tribe, for all death songs were sung in the old language. He sang that these people had made choices throughout their lives, just as the warrior had done. These enemies had chosen their paths in life, which lead to their deaths, just as everyone, just as the young tribesman himself had done. Each choice they made, had chosen Sokka to be their deaths, so that in battle there had been no choice. Sokka, child of Kya, brave of the wolf clan of the southern water tribe, had been these warriors' deaths since the day of their births. The young man called on Tui and La to guide the spirits, of these enemy dead, to the next world, where they could choose new lives, and new deaths.

* * *

Gushin, when the spirit had moved up to the young girl, had signaled the other scouts to retire, quietly. The two were waiting for him now at the end of the signal line. He was the only one still watching the camp. But all three boys heard the song of the spirit.

It was both song and chant, foreign to the sand benders' ears. They only understood two words in the song, Tui and La, the guiding spirits of the water tribes. For Gushin, who could see the man/wolf sing over the dead body, it was strange and wonderful. For the two boys, lying together in the dark, it was strange, and frightening to hear.

* * *

Sokka finished his song, and then he dragged the body into the ruins, to lie beside its shipmate.

* * *

The young warrior walked back up to where his friend lay on the sheet. He searched the area again with his eyes and ears. Satisfied that there was no danger, he knelt down, and setting his sword aside, looked at the young girl.

_Well are you going to do this or what?_ He asked himself. _If she wakes up, she is going to kill me._ Showing great courage, the tribesman made his decision, and poured water into the wash basin he had set by the young girl's head.

The first part wasn't that bad, Toph's breast wrap had already been pulled down, exposing her chest. It was not like he was actually undressing her or anything. He put a wash cloth, and the soap in the basin, soaped the cloth, and began washing his friend's face and neck. The arms were easy, he even stalled for a bit by lifting her up gently and washing her back, but then he finally had to admit he couldn't put it off any longer, and began on her shoulders, and then down onto her breasts and stomach. _Tui protect me!_ He prayed.

When he saw the bruising on one of Toph's breasts, a surge of anger ran through him. He was glad he had killed and wounded so many of the crew. He only wished he had killed more of them. She was just a little kid. Those people deserved to die, and suffer.

* * *

Gushin watched as the dark spirit knelt by the young girl. From this distance he was not sure at first what the spirit was doing. It reminded him of… _that was it!_ It reminded him of when his baby sister had been born, and he had watched the midwife bathe the newborn girl.

A new legend, was born that night. One more to add to the many legends concerning the Dark King of the South, and the True Daughter of Oma and Shu, she who would become the Blind Queen, she who had been chosen by her true parents to save the world.

And Gushin had been chosen by the spirits to be the world's witness. The boy began to silently crawl back to his companions. This could not wait. They had to return to the Hammi and tell the story of the great thing that was happening at the Well of the Spirits, on this night.

* * *

Sokka finally had gotten the vomit cleaned off of his friend, had rinsed off the soapy water, with a clean cloth, and had toweled her dry, but her breast wrap was still filthy. Well now that he had started he really had to finish. He had a little difficulty figuring out how the unfamiliar article of clothing was supposed to come off, but figured it out eventually. He untied the knot, and without disturbing the girl was able to get it off. He had not realized it before, but it was not just a piece of cloth but a specifically designed and made article of clothing. He set it aside, so he could wash it later.

_What about the rest?_ He asked himself looking at her ruined shorts, and her loin cloth. They stank and were stained. Yes he would have to do that part of her as well. Then he had an idea. It was a compromise, of sorts, but it solved at least a part of his problem.

The young man pulled out the piece of silk cloth he had found in the Captain's cabin. He had grabbed it and some scarves from the dresser, thinking that he could use them to cover his friend. Well what if he covered her, before he undressed her. Then he could undress and wash her without actually undressing her. It made perfect sense to the tribesman.

The silk was dark green with silver embroidery around the edges, the warrior tried to figure out how to get it on his friend, finally determining that it would be easier to lay the cloth down, and then move her on top of it. Once he had shifted the small earthbender onto the cloth, he wrapped the two sides over her, turning it into a type of full length dress, running from her arm pits to her knees. He tied a scarf around her chest, being careful not to put too much pressure on her injured breasts, to hold the top on, placing the knot under her arm.

Next, the young man reached up under the skirt of the dress, and pulled off his friend's undershorts. He debated with himself for a moment, then decided he had better remove her soiled loin cloth as well. This was more difficult than he had expected. His friend's funikoshi was not the same as his own breach cloth, and it took him a lot of fiddling to finally find, and untie the knot holding it in place. Eventually he was able to get it off as well.

Praying to Tui, La, Oma, Shu, with Yue, and as an afterthought Agni, thrown in for good measure, he reached under the skirt with the wash cloth and towel, and finished the bath he had started. Once he had rinsed and dried his friend's lower portion, he tied a second scarf low around her waist to hold the rest of the dress on. When it was all finished, he put the blanket over his friend, who _thank Yue,_ had remained unconscious throughout the entire process.

The young brave of the wolf clan, then took up the soiled clothes and began to wash them. As he was cleaning the young girl's breast wrap, a thought struck him. Only this morning he had told his friend that he would kill to touch her "bumps", and here it was less than twenty four hours later, and he had made good on his promise. He had killed, and he had touched her bumps. As a matter of fact he had killed two people, one for each bump.

The laugh started as a sardonic, low chuckle in the young man's chest, but it grew higher, as it grew stronger and louder. Soon it was a strange, high pitched cackling laughed, that would have frightened any conscious observer. The tribesman dropped the breast band, and fell to his knees, fighting with himself to gain control. He pulled himself back, sobbing for breath. He stood and vaulted up onto the ship, going to the scuttlebutt, he splashed the warm water on his face, rubbing it onto his face and neck. Then he cupped his hands and drank handful after handful.

It had been a long time since the warrior had had any water. It felt good going down his throat, but it tasted strange. He looked at his hands and saw the grease and ink that had rubbed off of his face. He needed to clean up.

The young man climbed down off of the ship, and rinsing out a rag used it and the soap to wash his face, neck, and hands. What the tribesman could not know, was that unlike his war paints, the ink he had used to create his wolf mask, had stained his skin, and although he was able to wash it off, a faded version of it remained behind. It would take weeks before the shadow of the mask would finally fade away entirely.

* * *

Once he had finished, Sokka checked on Toph again. She was back on her side in a fetal position, but he was happy to note that her breathing was slow and regular, as if she was asleep, not unconscious. He also saw that her hands and feet, which had been a horrible purple, when he had first untied her, where now starting to become a bright red. This, although not normal, was at least a sign that her circulation had not been seriously damaged, and that blood was now flowing into her hands and feet.

The warrior also saw that, in her sleep, the little earthbender had reached out with her right hand, and had grabbed onto the sand just off the edge of the sheet she was on. She had contact with her element again. For some reason this made his heart leap with joy, in his chest.

Exhaustion was no longer creeping up on the young man, it was now stomping around loudly, demanding recognition. The tribesman dragged himself to finish his washing of his friend's clothes, then hung them up on an impromptu clothes line, he had rigged off the side of the ship.

The swordsman dragged himself back up onto deck one more time. If he was hungry and thirsty, Toph would be doubly so, having been sick all the previous day. He quickly rummaged up some cold rice, dried meat, and a pitcher of water with a clean cup for her. Then he wearily climbed/ fell off of the ship, and sat down cross legged beside his friend. He wanted to be there when she woke up.

Sokka was just nodding off when he felt something cold and wet nudge him in his side. He shot up onto his feet grabbing for his sword. When he looked down for the source he saw a fox/wolf looking up at him, its tail wagging.

"Oh, hi buddy." He said, reaching his hand out to it, so it could give him a smell, he was surprised when he got a lick instead.

"Do I know you?" He asked.

The only reply was another lick of his fingers. The warrior sat down again, and scratched his new friend behind the ears. He was embarrassed that the creature had snuck up on him. But there seemed to be no harm done. With his eyes he followed the tracks of the creature, to see where it had come from. Not far away he saw a book lying on the sand. Then it struck him.

"You're my little buddy Fox-Guy from the library." He said to the fox/wolf.

She barked in reply. Sokka put his finger to his lips and then pointed to his sleeping friend. The creature seemed to understand, and became quiet, but still seemed to be happy to have found the tribesman.

"So ole' Wan Shi Tong is still sending you guys out, ehh?"

The fox/wolf nodded in answer. Sokka pulled off a piece of the dried meat and fed it to Fox-Guy, who ate it with gusto. She then licked him on the face again, turned, retrieved her book, and with a last look, scampered back out into the desert.

"Bye" The warrior said as he waved to the creature.

_I wonder if that just happened?_ He asked himself. Before he could really decide he was asleep again.

* * *

Auda abu Hammi, leader of the Hammi tribe, listened to the report of the scout he had sent out. The news of the destruction of Serkan's raiders was surprising. The Captain, as he was called, was a formidable opponent, and his benders were some of the best. But to hear that they had been routed by a lone, dark skinned warrior, who was protecting a fair skinned young girl, came too close to the myths, and songs to be easily believed. But Gushin was a good lad, he would become a warrior soon, and had done good service in many previous scouts. His words could not be discounted too quickly.

Auda thought, and finally sent the scout out again. They would report back after sunrise. Then Auda would decide how to proceed.

* * *

The sand column shot out of the desert floor, slamming Sokka in the chest, and threw him into the hull of the nearby ship. He sprang to his feet, a knife in each hand, searching for the attacking bender. He should never have let himself fall asleep. He called out,

"Toph!... Look out!"

"Sokka?"

The warrior looked and saw his friend in an aggressive earthbending stance, directed at him.

"Toph! It's me Sokka!" He called out to her.

The young earthbender hesitated. She was not sure what was happening. Her hands and feet were numb and tingling. He earthbending senses were badly compromised by the numbness. She knew someone was there, but she was not sure who it was. Also, her senses were still sandy from the cactus juice, which still lingered in her system. Everything was furry, and hard to get a clear sense of where or what anything was.

She was frightened, not just of not knowing what was real and what was dream, but she was even more frightened that her bending sense would never get any better. She felt very much alone and lost.

The voices of her dreams came back to her. Suki's cat creature voice, growling that Sokka would never come for her, that he would go to the Kyoshi Warrior, and abandon the earthbender to her fate in the desert. That he did not care enough for the "little girl", that he wanted a woman.

The other voice had been the woman who had forced the juice on her, when she was captured. When Toph had been so sea sick that she had vomited everything out of her stomach, and was left throwing up bile, in dry heaves on the deck, the woman had whispered in her ear. _"You think this is bad, little cunt, oh no, this is actually the good part, wait till after we sell you. Then you'll look back on this as the good times."_ The woman had laughed at that. The voice had haunted the young girl in her dreams.

Toph stood, her arms and legs shaking. Her entire body was screaming in pain. Her neck was so stiff she could hardly move her head, her muscles seizing and cramping, her head pounding.

"Sokka?" She asked again.

"It's ok Toph," The tribesman answered. "It's over, they're gone, no one is going to hurt you anymore. It's all over, your safe now."

Sokka tried to use a soothing voice while telling his friend this. He began to move towards her in the growing light of predawn.

"What do you mean gone?" She asked him.

"Gone, erh…. They ran away. It's just you and me here now."

The young girl relaxed a little, and started to send her bending out to take in the area around her. When she had woken up, all she could feel was someone beside her on the sand, and she had attacked.

She could feel the ships in their semicircle, she could feel the ruins, vaguely, then in the ruins she felt two people on the ground.

"They're not all gone! Your lying to me. There are two of them over there" She shouted , pointing towards where Sokka had put the bodies during the night.

Toph took up her aggressive bending stance again, directing it towards the young warrior.

"Wait!" the tribesman said holding out his hands.

He dropped his knives in the sand and continued to approach his friend.

"Those two are…" What could he tell her. "Well they're not a problem."

"What do mean, not a problem?" She shouted. "What are they your friends now?"

"No! Toph." He told her. "I mean they can't hurt you now. No one is going to hurt you now."

The young man reached out, and placed his hand reassuringly on his friend's shoulder. Toph, her sense weakened, was unprepared for the warrior's touch, and it brought back all the hands, the hard hands, grabbing at her, tying her, pulling and tearing her, hurting her. She lashed out with her bending.

Sokka was sent sprawling, the sand tearing the skin from his hands and chest, knocking the wind out of him. Leaving him gasping for breath on the sand, where he had been thrown.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Toph shouted at him. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I am sorry this is a little late but at least I got this chapter up on the right day. I am trying to do weekly updates.

No action, sorry, there won't be any for the next couple of chapters, which will mostly be Toph and Sokka dealing with the last couple of chapters. I hope you won't be bored.

I hope this chapter works for you, the readers. You are the ones the story is written for after all. I am new at this, and I want to get better.

To all of the reviewers, thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. I almost went in a completely different direction with this chapter, but all the positive reviews on the last chapter kept me on course. I just hope it is the right course. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

To Dex and Chris, I wasn't sure how to reply to you so I am doing it here.

Chris: Thank you very much. You probably read the forth edit of this last chapter, which is why you missed all the bad spelling in the first three versions, not to mention the horrendous typo that Ktuluman caught.

Dex: Thank you so much. You are too generous, but I ain't complaining. I just hope you will still think so after this chapter.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	18. Chapter 18

I'll Walk You Home pt 18

Chapter 7

pt. 3

Morning

* * *

"Sorry!" Sokka gasped out where he lay sprawled on the sand.

He painfully rose to his feet, holding his skinned hands protectively to his chest. He could see that Toph was still in her aggressive bending stance. He could also see the fear, and anger in her face. He tried to put a soothing tone into his voice, but between the exhaustion and the pain, it came out a bit more truculent then he had wanted when he told her,

"It's ok Toph! It's over, no one is going to hurt your anymore."

"What about them?" She asked pointing towards where he had hidden the two bodies.

"They can't hurt you, or anyone else." The warrior told his friend. "Check them out, they haven't moved."

He prided himself that he was able to say this last, while withholding the pain from his voice.

The young girl sent a wave of bending out to the forms lying in the sand out in the ruins. She was frustrated and frightened, that she was unable to get any fine detail from her senses, but she could feel that the two people had not moved. She studied them for a little time and finally determined that they had to be either unconscious or so well tied up that they were harmless, since they had not moved, at least in any obvious way, while she was feeling them. She relaxed a little.

The young warrior waited patiently for a response from his friend. Finally he saw her relax her stance slightly, and he took it as a good sign. He could see that she was swaying a little as she stood there, _she must be pretty dead on her feet_ he thought.

Toph just wished that her head would stop pounding. The pain from her body was bad, but the pain in her head was unbearable.

"Toph…" The young man said in a quiet voice. "It's over, you're safe now."

The young earthbender started at the sound of the young man's voice, but then quieted herself. She wanted to believe him. She wanted it to be over. She wanted to be safe. But her senses were so fuzzy. What if she never regained her ability to sense the world, what if this was the best she would ever be able "see". "_You'll look back on this as the good times."_ She heard the mocking voice again in her head. She felt her eyes burning with unshed tears. She was so frightened, and felt so alone, and helpless.

"Toph…" The tribesman gently spoke. "Why don't you sit down, and let me get some food and water for you. You will feel better, I promise."

The young girl wanted to believe her friend. He was her friend. She knew that he was the one person that she could count on. She knew, even through all the pain, despair, and fear, that she could trust that voice. That Sokka was the one person that she could trust. _He doesn't want you! _ Suki's voice rang in her head. "_He wants a woman not a frightened little girl."_ The Suki cat-creature still prowled through her mind.

Finally, the pain and fatigue became too much and Toph relented, sitting down where she stood, falling heavily to the sand, with her legs crossed.

The young warrior carefully approached the food and jug of water he had earlier set aside. _I am such a fool!_ He berated himself. S_uch a fool!_ He had thought his friend would wake up, and she would hug him _"My hero!"_ And maybe she would kiss him on the cheek, the way his sister had kissed Aang when he returned their mother's necklace to her. Then he would tell Toph of his courageous chase and rescue, and she would be amazed and impressed with his cleverness, bravery, and skill. And she would actually like him now. _What a fool!_

She must hate him more than ever for failing her once again. If he had been any good the sand benders never would have taken her in the first place. She had spent over a day in the slavers' hands thanks to his incompetence.

The tribesman poured out a cup of water from the jug and held it out to his friend.

"Here, take small sips to start, don't try to gulp it all down at once." He told her.

Toph, sitting on the sand, could not tell where the cup was, her bending sense was so badly impaired. She reached out blindly with her right hand. Sokka saw that she was having trouble, and placed the cup against her hand. She took it, but before she could get it to her mouth, it slipped from her numb fingers, onto the sand.

"Fuck!" The young girl said in frustration.

"Sorry." The young man told her. He added, "I'll get it."

The warrior picked up the cup, rinsed it, and filling it only part way, held it out to his friend.

"Here…" He told her.

Toph held up both hands this time, and Sokka placed the cup in them, being careful not to actually touch the young girl. Using both hands she managed to get the cup to her lips and she took a sip. The earthbender had not realized just how thirsty she was until the water hit her tongue. Her mouth felt dry as dust, and her tongue was swollen. When she swallowed the water, she felt it, as it ran down her raw throat, burning but wonderful. She was not even sure that any got to her stomach, her mouth and throat were so dry.

She gulped down the rest of the cup, which was disappointingly small. The water once again burned in her mouth and throat, but this time she felt it hit bottom. Her stomach convulsed as the water hit it. She managed to keep the water down, but it took her a few seconds before she was able to swallow again.

"More!" She told the tribesman, as she held out the cup.

Sokka filled it half way this time, and Toph drank it down in one gulp. It was not until the third cup that she even noticed the taste. The water had a minerally flavor, she realized that it must be from a well. With the fourth cup, the young warrior was actually filling the cup now, she realized that the reason her mouth and throat were raw, was due to her being sick and throwing up the day before. She took a small gulp and rinsed her mouth with it, spitting the water onto the sand. Some of it dribbled down her chin, but she didn't care. She finished the cup, and still holding the cup, she lowered her hands to her lap, letting the water sink in.

The throbbing in her head dulled, and the shaking in her arms and legs calmed down. Her friend had been right, she did feel much better.

"Are you ok?" the young man asked her.

"I'm fine!" The young girl spat at him.

It came out much harsher then she had intended. She was still frightened at being half blind, and feeling so weak and she took it out on him.

"Have something to eat." The tribesman said.

He unwrapped one of the rice balls and pulled off piece of it, dropping it into her cup.

"It's pickled rice." He warned her. "Let me add some water."

He poured a little water from the jug into the cup. The earthbender brought it up to her lips and slurped down the mix of salty rice and water. She was glad the warrior had added the water to the mix. It made it much easier to eat.

The food hit her stomach and she felt it rumble and gurgle for a few seconds, but then it settled down. Just as with the water, she had not realized how hungry she was till she tasted the food. Then she became ravenous.

"More!" She demanded, holding out her cup.

Sokka put another third of a rice ball in her cup with more water. The young girl slurped them down.

"Tastes awful!" She told him, holding out her cup for more.

She ate two rice balls this way, and her stomach began to relax and actually felt almost contented with the water and food now in it. She felt much better as well. The ache in her head had dulled to just a mild pulse. He arms and legs felt steady again. The cramps in her muscles had stopped.

"How you doing?" Her friend asked her.

Still feeling defensive, she shot back at him with,

"I'm fine!"

"Sorry" The young man apologized. Then he added, "Do you want some dried meat?"

Toph didn't answer, she only held out her cup again. Sokka tore off a piece of the meat and put it and a little water in the cup. She slurped it into her mouth and began to chew the meat.

The warrior looked up at the sky. He could see that the sun was going to be up soon. Most of the stars were gone, and the sky was going from black to grey. He could even see a tinge of red along the horizon to the east.

As he looked back towards his friend, he saw that she was holding her universal eating utensil out for more meat. The tribesman tore off another chunk and dropped it into the cup, adding more water. The young girl slurped it into her mouth and began chewing. She was feeling a lot better now.

"If you are feeling ok," The young man said. "Then I am going to get my stuff. I left it out in the desert. I'll be right back."

"What do you mean your stuff?" The earthbender asked, around the chunk of meat in her mouth.

"Just my clothes and stuff." He explained. "I'll be right back."

"Your clothes?" She asked. "Sokka are you naked? Again?"

"I'm not naked!" He said defensively.

"But you're pretty close!" She accused.

"Well…" He responded, lamely.

"And what the fuck am I wearing?" She asked, noticing for the first time the dress like outfit she was in.

"Oh, well your clothes were… dirty." He explained. "And I had to wash them."

It took a moment for the import of his last statement to sink in, before Toph swallowed the piece of meat she was chewing, and then in a very dangerous voice she asked him,

"Sokka, did you undress me?"

_Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!_ He thought. Aloud he answered,

"Kind'a…"

"Kind'a?" She asked.

"Well yeah… but only kind'a."

"Sokka, did you see me naked?" He voice was low and quiet.

"Just your bumps." He answered, in an even quieter voice.

"Tits, they're called TITS. You saw my TITS. Oma!" She cursed. "You are such an asshole."

With this last she awkwardly threw the cup at him, hitting him in the chest.

"What about the rest of me, did you see all of me?" She was embarrassed, hurt, and angry all at the same time.

Toph just wanted to run away, sink into the ground, but most of all she wanted to kill the young man in front of her.

"I didn't see anything else, I swear!" The tribesman told her, holding up his right hand. "Just your… chest."

"Get out! GO AWAY!' she shouted.

"Ok, ok" he said trying to placate her.

The young warrior jumped up onto his feet, grabbed his sword, and jogged away from the irate young girl. He looked back constantly, to make sure she was alright. He didn't like leaving her, even for a few seconds. He wanted to be within arm's reach of, to make sure that nothing bad would happen to her. He had lost her once, he never wanted to lose her again.

* * *

Toph stood up, she was too angry to sit anymore. Her feet were better, it no longer felt like she was walking around on two blocks of wood, and even though she could not feel her toes, she could at least wiggle them. Her hands were better as well. They were still numb but the tingling was now just irritating, not painful, and her whole hand was tingling, including her fingers. She paced, alternately clenching then shaking her hands.

_This is so awful!_ Sokka had seen her naked. _OMA!_ The sand benders had probably seen her naked too. _"He wants a woman not a little girl."_ This was too terrible, too awful. She had never been so embarrassed in her life. She just wanted to die. Or better yet, she wanted to kill all the sand benders. But most of all she wanted to kill Meathead.

And what had he dressed her in? She probably looked ridiculous. With her numb hands she couldn't tell much about the outfit. From the feel of it against her skin, it felt like silk. _Oh great, what if it is shear and he can see through it?_ Her mother had always warned her about that. She could tell that she was naked under it. All of her, just hanging out there for everyone to see, in some awful looking, see-through outfit. That would just be like the Idiot. Oh yes she was really going to kill him this time.

* * *

The warrior ran to his cache, sheathed his sword, then shouldered the heavy water skin, grabbed the rest of his gear and ran back to the young earthbender. _This is bad_ He told himself. _She really hates me now. She is never going to forgive me._

"I'm back." He told her as he ran up, keeping well back from his friend.

"Oh Goody!" She said, with as much venom as she could, which was quite a lot actually, in her voice.

"Sorry." He responded quietly.

"Oh, I know you're sorry, Stupid!" The young girl told him. "That is the one thing in this world I can always be sure of. That you are sorry. You are always sorry. You're the sorriest asshole in the whole world!"

Sokka almost said that he was sorry, but he caught himself just in time. But he was not smart enough to stop himself from saying,

"Your clothes are probably dry by now."

He pointed to her torn underwear hanging from his make shift line. That's when he realized his blunder.

"But it's your underwear and it's kind of torn up some." He finished lamely.

"Oh that will be so much better!" The young girl replied. "That might be great for you, Stupid. You may like running around in a bunch of torn up underwear, but I am not some useless, stupid, peasant from some remote, idiotic water tribe. Where are my real clothes?"

Sokka, who was in the middle of putting on his clothes, had to think a moment before he answered,

"They're back at our original camp by the ancient road."

"Well that's a real useful place for them to be!" She yelled at him.

"Sorry… I…"

"I know! I KNOW! You're SORRY. Well I'm sorry too. I'm sorry I ever met you, you STUPID ASSHOLE.

"Toph…"

"Shut up!" She cut him off. "Don't say anything, don't come near me, just leave me the fuck alone! I can't even tell you how much I HATE you right now! Why couldn't that asshole of a sand bender just have KILLED you, like he said he did! My life would be so much better now if he had!"

Toph ran off then, almost running into one of the ships, but she sensed it, at the last moment, and ran between two of them, then she fell onto her knees, leaning up against the hull of one. The tears came then, she had been holding them back, but she couldn't hold them back any longer. She put her face into her hands and wept.

Sokka ran after the young girl, but when he heard her crying, on the other side of the ship, he stopped. He was afraid he would chase her out into the desert if he got any closer. He backed away as quietly as he could.

Tears were starting to sting the warrior's own eyes now. _Good work Sokka!_ He told himself. One more grand failure to be added to his long string of total failures. Over the last few days he had begun to realize how much he cared for, _admit it, loved_ the little earthbender. Loved her like a friend, like a sister, like something more, even if_ she is only a kid_. Now, like Yue, and Suki, he had destroyed any chance for the two of them. He had not protected Yue, he had failed Suki, and now he had not protected Toph, and she hated him for it.

The fifteen year old wiped the tears off his cheek, and felt a stinging in his hand. He saw where he had skinned his hands on the sand when Toph had first attacked him. He walked over to the wash basin and picked up the soap. Back home he never got sick, and never had infections, but here the smallest cut always seemed to fester. He scrubbed hard with the bar of soap on the skinned sections of his hands and chest. He welcomed the pain it caused, but the tears running down his face were not from the pain in his hands and chest.

* * *

Gushin signaled the scout to slow. They had used sand bending to return as quickly as they could to the Well of the Spirits, but he was cautious, and did not want to use bending too close to the Dark Spirit, and the Blind Queen. He signaled the three boys with him to follow, and he began to run in a long circle to be able to approach from the east. They would be coming from downwind, with the rising sun blinding the eyes of anyone camped at the well.

* * *

Once Sokka had finished cleaning his abrasions, he finished dressing. Then he took one of the towels from Toph's bath and cleaned the grease, ink, and blood from the sword. He noticed that the pommel was in the shape of a lotus blossom, he was not surprised, the lotus blossom was the symbol of Master Piandao, and was used for all the pommels of the swords made by his Sifu, including Space Sword.

Once Spring Rain was clean, and the gold work shining again, the warrior returned it to its scabbard and slung it from his waist. He moved through the enemy camp collecting his weapons. He found and cleaned all but one throwing knife and one senbon that he had used last night. He also found the bow and quiver of the enemy archer. He picked them up as well. Thinking back on the first fight of yesterday, he realized that a long range weapon would be useful against benders. Maybe he could teach himself how to use the bow.

As the tribesman moved through the camp, Toph came out from between two of the ships. The young man saw her but held his tongue. Eventually he finished and sat down in his impromptu camp, by the glow crystal holders, he had set up last night. The sun was just rising above the horizon.

* * *

Gushin had skillfully moved the scout into the ruins and had approached the camp just was the sun was rising. He saw that the spirit had transformed himself into a dark skinned human warrior with a golden sword. The Blind Queen was dressed in an elegant dark green silken robe.

* * *

Toph finally walked up to where Sokka was sitting. She could feel him more clearly now. Her hands and feet were getting better, but were still not back to what they had once been. But now she could tell it was the water tribesman sitting there at least.

"Let's get out of here." She told him, her voice still harsh.

"Ok." He said. His voice sad.

He stood up, putting on his shoulder bag and slinging the map case onto his other shoulder and then threw the heavy water skin across his back. He held out his headdress to the small earthbender, saying,

"You should wear this, to protect you from the sun."

"What is it?" She asked.

"A Sand Tribe headdress. I got it in Ba Sing Se." He explained.

"Is it one of theirs?" She asked, indicating the camp around them.

"It's mine." He told her.

"I'd rather have one of theirs."

"Right." He said in a flat voice.

The fifteen year old pulled himself up onto the center ship and headed towards the Captain's cabin, he was stopped by the young girl's voice as she asked,

"These ships. Would it be faster if we used one of them?"

"Yes" He answered, surprise in his reply. "Are you sure you want to use one?"

"I'm sure I don't want to." She told him bitterly. "But I am even more sure that I want to get out of this fucking desert as fast as I can. If that means using one of these things, then that's what I want to use."

The young earthbender raised a column of sand under her feet and stepped onto the deck of the ship. The feel of the wood deck sent shivers up her spine. She was blind again.

The tribesman dropped the water skin onto the deck.

"Give me a minute to take care of the other two ships and we can leave." The young man told her.

The warrior jumped down over the side of the middle ship. He climbed aboard the lead ship, was on deck for about a minute, then he jumped down onto the sand, and jogged to the third ship, repeating the process. After a short time, Toph could smell smoke.

Sokka climbed back on board, saying,

"I didn't want any of the crew coming back and being able to use these ships again."

The tone in his voice was starting to irritate the young girl. The tribesman sounded either sad or apologetic in everything he said. She would rather he came back at her with the same anger she was feeling towards him. That would make it easier for her. This quiet, sad young man was just making her even angrier.

Sokka bustled around the deck for a minute. The small bender was not able to tell what he was doing on the wooden deck. Finally he asked her,

"Toph, can you stand over here by the mast and bend the sand under the ship so it will slide easily over it?"

"Sure!" She almost shouted.

She followed the sound of his voice until she could feel the wooden pole of the mast. Taking her forward stance she began to feel for the sand under the ship. It took her some time to eventually find it, but she was relieved to finally feel the earth beneath her. She began to bend the sand.

The tribesman raised the sail, and trimmed it to catch the westerly wind that was freshening as the sun rose higher in the sky. The ship pulled out and turned towards the east, heading into the sunrise, as the columns of smoke rose from the ships left behind.

* * *

Gushin watched the ship leave. He sent Sah-id to use his mirror to signal the hunting party that it was safe to come to the Well of the Spirits.

* * *

Toph was surprised to find that even though the ship moved as it did the day before, she did not feel seasick. Maybe it was because she had to concentrate so hard on her bending, or maybe it was the way Sokka handled the ship, but for right now she felt fine.

It only took about two hours of sailing before the young seaman warned her, that they were approaching their camp of yesterday, and that they needed to stop.

Sokka quickly loaded all their supplies onto the deck of the ship. In the mean time the young earthbender had gotten her clothes and keeping the ship between them, she changed into her spare set of underwear and then into her travel clothes. She stuffed the makeshift dress into her clothes bag. Eventually she joined the young man on deck.

The tribesman, while he was packing up the camp had found the other orange that his friend had bought. He wasn't sure what he should do with it. Eventually he just stomped on it, crushing it and burying it in the sand by the road.

Once they were ready Sokka raised the sail, Toph starting bending again, and the ship set up on a course going due south now, paralleling the ancient road, out of the desert.

* * *

Auda Abu Hammi sailed into the Well of the Spirits. He saw the beautiful ships of Serkan, called the Captain, burning and thought it a great shame. But he did nothing to put out the fires. One did not interfere in the acts of spirits, especially spirits as powerful as one of the Dark Twins.

He first heard the story of Gushin and the other scouts. Then he sent his trackers out to find Serkan and the rest of his crew.

Next Gushin lead him to the two bodies in the ruins. The scouts had already searched the dead for anything of value, and had given it to their tribal leader, as they told their tale. The old man examined the corpses carefully. The man had no obvious wound, other than the one on his head which was already bandaged. Auda finally found the small slit in the man's chest. It was an expert thrust. Auda who bore the scars of twenty-three great wounds on his body, and who had killed seventy-five men in combat knew of such things.

The woman was obvious, but what only Auda saw was that her head had been struck off with a single stroke, there had been no hesitation, it had been expertly and powerfully done, with a magnificent sword. Her face was blank, unlike the man's which showed his surprise at being killed. The woman didn't even know she was dead. Her spirit probably still roamed the desert thinking that she was still alive.

The one who had killed these two, whether spirit or man, was a great warrior, and should be respected and feared. Feared by all except Auda, who feared no man, or spirit, but he would treat this man/spirit as an equal if they ever met.

The trackers sent a runner back for the Chief. They had found the Captain, and they had something important to show their leader.

Auda examined the body. Serkan had died not far from the camp, he had bled to death, and perhaps from something more. What was interesting was the mark, in black ink on his forehead. It was the mark of a lotus blossom. The chief had heard of the White Lotus, long before they had revealed themselves by liberating Ba Sing Se, but he had never heard of the Black Lotus. This must truly be the sign of the Dark One, who had marked this man to make an example of him.

Two more bodies where eventually found. Both male, both benders. Two men and a woman were also found. Most interesting was the woman, for she also bore the mark of the Black Lotus. She had it over her heart. They never found the boy.

The scouts reported to the chief that a large number of dust clouds could be seen approaching the Well. Auda understood. Columns of smoke were rare in the desert, there was nothing here to burn. Two columns coming from the Well of the Spirits would draw groups from all the tribes to investigate. He would have to be ready with a great feast for them all this evening. Luckily their hunt had been successful up till now, and he had plenty of food for his guests. And now he had a most amazing story to entertain the representatives from all the tribes with.

* * *

Muge never wiped the Mark of the Dark One off her chest. Eventually she had it tattooed onto her skin. And even in her old age, when it was no longer seemly, she would show the mark to all who asked her about it. After all after the Blind Queen, Muge was the first woman chosen by the Dark King. The first of all the thousands who would bear his mark over their hearts.

* * *

The boy, Osman, was found, but not by a tribal ship. He was bound, as all benders were bound. He was cleaned, as all young ones were cleaned, in preparation for a sale. And was taken to the great market in the desert.

The market was small that year. Many buyers and sellers had already left. Stories had been circulating of an example being made by the Dark One of his displeasure at the trade. There was even talk that the market might not be held next year. No one with any sense wanted to suffer the displeasure of the Dark One.

Even though the prices were badly depressed, the boy was eventually sold, and the catchers took their money and returned to the desert. They left the boy with the age old saying

"You will look back on the time before you were sold as the good times."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I am sorry this is a day late, and I apologize for all the mistakes, I am rushing to get this up. I am trying to do weekly updates, just not very successfully.

Still no action, sorry, but at least a couple of more dead bodies. I hope you aren't bored.

I hope this chapter works for you, the readers. You are the ones the story is written for after all. I am new at this, and I want to get better.

To all of the reviewers, thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. All the positive reviews on the last chapter were a real boost to my spirits. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

To whatever comes to mind: Thank you very much, I am glad it is working for you and I hope you are still hooked after this chapter.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	19. Chapter 19

I'll Walk You Home pt 19

Chapter 8

pt. 1

A Quiet Walk

* * *

Mr. Cho sat in the shade of the awning in front of his shop, and waited for the sun to set. The sky was red to the west, as the orb slowly sank below Mr. Liu's shop across the street. Hopefully the night would be cool.

Mr. Cho was looking forward to a quiet night. It had been a very exciting day. First in the morning, far off to the northwest, there had been a pillar of smoke rising up into the sky. The dozen or so residents of the village had gathered in the main street to discuss it. Later Mrs. Fu had come into the village and told Cho that some of the Sand Tribers on the edge of the Dune Sea had gone off into the desert in their sand sleds. This required a lot of discussion and visiting among the various houses and stores on the main street, all very strange and exciting.

Then, in the heat around noon, Mrs. Mi's lynx/cat and been chased by Mr. Liu's squirrel/dog. That had caused quite an uproar, especially since the day was so hot. Little Min Min had escaped unharmed, but Mrs. Mi was still not talking to Mr. Liu.

The last excitement, Mr. Cho hoped it would be the last, was only about an hour ago. A new column of smoke was seen by everyone. This time very close by down where the old road moves out onto the dune sea.

The old man sat, tilting his chair back, watching the old road, waiting for the day to finally settle down and cool off. That is when he saw the strange pair coming up the ancient way. At first he thought it was a man and a boy. They were moving slowly, as if they had traveled a great distance this day, and had a very long way still to go.

Right after the war, traffic had increased on the ancient way, until the village could expect one or two parties a day. But then about a month ago, it had ceased completely. Perhaps these two were the start of a new spurt of travelers using the old road. Mr. Cho thought about getting up and dusting off his wares for a possible sale, but it was late, and the day had already been so exciting, the old shop keeper did not think these two, probably a father and his son, would want to buy anything.

As the two travelers approached, in the low blood red light of the dying sun, Mr. Cho could see that he was mistaken. It was not a man and a boy, but two boys, maybe brothers. As the pair reached the start of the village the old shop keeper could see that he had been wrong all along. The taller boy was dark skinned, darker than even the Sand Tribers. He was a Water Triber, and his companion was not a boy, but a young girl. Judging from her size and lack of figure she was young, only ten or so. From her light skin, bare feet and clothes, she was Earth Kingdom.

_What was a nice Earth Kingdom girl doing all alone, out on the road with a "wet"?_ Cho asked himself. The answer was obvious to the shop keeper _she was not a nice young girl._ The old man had never seen a wet before, but he had heard the stories all his life, about their dark skin, blue eyes, strange ways and their magic, especially their sex magic. He knew all about "wet kisses", and the rest of it.

This wet looked dangerous. He was tall, lean and heavily armed, with a long sword, a club and a giant knife, hanging from his belt, and a bow and quiver slung on his back pack. The look that Cho saw in the eyes of the young man frightened the old man. The blue eyes were sunken, and rimmed in red, with dark circles underneath. They were never at rest, constantly darting from one side to the other, now focused close, now looking far ahead, trying to find the danger, the trap. For an instant they landed on Cho's own dark green eyes, and the old shop man felt a cold shiver run up his spine as the teenager assessed the older man, and decided not to kill him, yet, then passed on.

The young girl looked just as haggard and as dangerous as the teenage boy. Her pale green eyes were blood shot to the point that they looked like red coals in the low light of the setting sun. Her black hair was held up into a bun on her head by a green hair band, with two puff balls, that were probably white but looked red in the light. She kept clenching and shaking her hands, as if she were trying to grab something.

The shop keeper stood up slowly, and went into his shop. He felt bad about abandoning his chair, but it was a sacrifice he would have to make. He closed the door and watched the pair move through the village. Across the street he could see Mr. Liu looking out of his own shop window. Their eyes met for a moment, and Cho decided that it would be good to have a village meeting. If there were wets roaming freely over the land, it was time the village took steps to protect itself.

* * *

Sokka and Toph trudged up the road through the village and onto the rocky scrub land beyond it. Toph was glad to be back on solid earth again. Her "vision" had been improving all day but she had not realized it until she was able to get off of the wooden deck of the sand ship, and down onto real earth. She was much less anxious now that she could feel her surroundings again with most of her old clarity. Her fingers still tingled but it wasn't even annoying now, just something in the background.

Sokka had ransacked the ship before he burned it. He had taken any food that he could carry from the ships galley. From the Captain's cabin, he had taken the charts, and the log books. He had then used his club to smash the desk to pieces. Toph had heard the noise from where she was on the earth and had shouted,

"What's going on? Are you all right?"

"Just looking for secret drawers." The warrior had answered her.

He normally would have enjoyed the chance to solve the puzzle of a secret drawer, but now he was too tired and pissed off to bother. He just smashed the desk to pieces and looked through the rubble. He was rewarded with two small sacks of silver coins, and one small purse of gold. He also found a small wooden box that contained a small white pearl, about as large as the tip of his little finger. All this went into his money belt.

* * *

Once the tribesman and the young earthbender were past the village, Sokka began to look for a place for the two of them to camp for the night. He wanted someplace that was not too far away from the road, and that looked defensible.

He found, as he walked along, that he would close his eyes and when he opened them again he would be ten or fifteen paces farther down the road. He had done long hunts before, back home, where he would be up for two or more days but he had never felt this exhausted before in his life.

Finally the hunter found a spot that would work for a camp.

"We should set up camp." He said pointing towards the site he had chosen.

Toph made no reply. She simply walked off in the direction indicated. She had not spoken a word since they had left the desert.

Once on the spot chosen the warrior checked to make sure they could watch the road without being seen. He did not start a fire.

"A fire would give us away." He explained. "It's safer to have a cold camp tonight, and we can have a fire in the morning."

The young man dumped his gear unceremoniously on the ground and sat down. The young girl sat a short distance away.

"Food?" The boy asked.

The girl shook her head, no. The warrior pulled his cloak and his bedroll off of his pack, and handed the blanket to his companion saying,

"It's going to get cold tonight, why don't…"

Toph waited for a few seconds, in the last couple of hours she had noticed that he would start a sentence then would stop. She suspected that he was falling asleep between words. She tossed a pebble at the young man. He shook himself and went on,

"You'll need the blanket to stay warm. Can you take the first…"

He tried to find another word besides watch, but all he could come up with was look out, which wouldn't work either so he finished with,

"Watch. When you get tired, just wake me up, and I'll take over."

As he held out the blanket to the earthbender he noticed the space earth bracelet on his wrist. He had forgotten all about it.

Toph reached out and took the blanket from him, and wrapped it around her shoulders. She noticed that he had not lowered his arm, and that he seemed to be staring at his own wrist.

"Crap!" the young man finally said. "I… found… your armband but forgot to give it to you. Sorry!"

He carefully pulled the black metal band off of his wrist and held it out to her.

"Idiot!" She said, as she snatched the bracelet from his hand.

The young girl thought the armband was gone forever. She was not sure when or who had taken it from her. She could not remember much of what had happened yesterday, and what she could was mixed up with the dreams she had had.

Toph held the bracelet in both hands. It was her most precious possession. It was unique in the world, made from a piece of space metal, given to her by the young man himself. She slipped it onto her left arm. She was about to say something when she heard Sokka's snore. He had wrapped himself in that awful wool cloak of his, and was already fast asleep. He did not see the tears in his young friend's eyes.

* * *

Toph woke up needing to pee. She was nice and warm but she knew that it would be cold out of her blanket. She slowly took stock of her situation as she pulled herself up out of the sleep state she had been in. She was in her blanket, on the ground, and there was something warm and hard next to her. She used a little earthbending to feel that she was curled up on the ground next to Sokka, and he had his cloak and his arm thrown over her. His head was still on his knapsack, so it was obvious that he had not moved in the night. She had been the one to seek out his warmth in the cold of the early morning, and in his sleep, he had welcomed her, covering her with his cloak and his arm, pulling her in.

The young girl moved slowly away from the young man, till his arm finally fell onto the ground. The warrior made a distressed sound, but remained asleep. The earthbender got up and went off to empty her bladder. When she got back, she raised an earthtent around herself. It would be cold and lonely, but she would not appear weak.

The green eyes shot open, the mouth let out a gasp of terror. The Suki/Cat had been stalking her again and the metal bender had woken up in a cold sweat. This had been the second time it had happened since she had tried to get back to sleep.

The next time Toph woke up, it was because she heard her name being called. She sent a wave of bending out. Sokka was tossing in his sleep calling her name. Finally he woke up and looking around he called for his young friend, even knocking on the wall of her earthtent.

"I'm fine Meathead!" she shouted through the wall. "Now leave me alone!"

The young warrior did not bother her after that, but he did not go back to sleep either. She could feel him sit against a rock, with his sword in his lap, as he watched through the rest of the night.

Eventually morning came, Toph dropped her tent, and in silence, the two of them ate, broke camp and started on the road again.

* * *

The next days followed this same pattern. Toph would sleep in her tent, having bad dreams of being stalked and helpless. Sokka would sleep sitting up, with his sword at the ready, occasionally calling out for his friend. Then they would get up in the morning, eat and get back on the road, until the next camp. The only good sleep either had gotten had been on that first night, before Toph had woken up for the first time.

The only variation on this routine, being that whenever the two took a break, Sokka would practice different ways of dropping his gear quickly. After the Serpent's Pass he wanted to be able to move directly into a fight if he needed to. The most effective method he found was to slip his hands through the straps of his knapsack, shoulder bag, and water skin from the back. Then he would shoot his hands forward and up, while ducking his head. This would drop everything. He even got to the point where he could do a reverse grip draw of his sword using his left hand, and a straight draw of his club with his right hand, while dropping the gear.

On the third day they passed through another small village. Once again all the shops were closed, and no one was on the streets. The young warrior knew that they were now moving through territory that had once been occupied by the Fire Nation, and he chalked up the fear in the people to a general mistrust of strangers, due to the occupation.

* * *

By mid-afternoon of the fourth day, they arrived at a medium sized town.

"A good place to rest and re-supply." The young man said.

The young girl made a non-committal grunt, and the two of them proceeded to the market in the center of the town. It was late enough that many of the stalls had reopened after the heat of the mid day. There was a lot of produce and other products from the surrounding area. Sokka noticed that there were a number of Earth Kingdom soldiers strolling through the market. They looked like they were either shopping or just hanging out. They did not conduct themselves as soldiers on duty normally would.

While they were looking at a stall of fruit, mostly apples, and peaches, one of the soldiers approached the pair.

"Hey pretty girl." The soldier in the lead said to Toph.

He was tall, in his twenties and attractive. Apparently he had a way with women, at least he and his comrades thought he did.

"Why are you with this wet?" The soldier asked Toph. "I don't think it's right that these outsiders come to our country, and then take all the pretty girls for themselves. What do you think boys?"

This last was to the six other soldiers coming over to join their friend.

Sokka looked over to where his companion was standing. He noted the seven men in uniform, two of them looked like benders, and all seven carried curved broad swords, military issue. The warrior, with minimal movement used his left hand to loosen the sword at his belt. He then inserted his hands into the straps of his gear. To the casual observer he looked like he was just taking the strain off of his shoulders.

Toph turned to "Mr. Way-With-Women" and using her bending got a fix on him and his buddies. _This is going to be fun_. She told herself, as she cracked her knuckles.

"Yeah girly, you should be with us not this wet." One of the other soldiers said.

"Tell me pretty girl?" Way-With-Women asked, "Why would you want to be with a wet, when you have all us handsome Earth Kingdom boys right here?"

"Well maybe…" The young girl said. "If you boys were men, you wouldn't need to ask that question. Oh… and being total assholes doesn't help much either."

Sokka closed his eyes for less than a second. He created his image and made his plan.

* * *

First Sergeant Minh, of Badger/Mole Company, first battalion, four hundred and forty-second cavalry regiment, second brigade, of the first cavalry division, Army of the Po, walked through the market of My Lot. She hated occupation duty. It turned good cavalry troopers into bad. Soldiers should be training and fighting, not dealing with civilians, enforcing laws, and patrolling trade routes.

Minh saw the troopers of second squad, first platoon in the market. They were off duty and none of her business, but they were in her company, and whether they were on or off duty, they were her troops and her responsibility. Besides she didn't think much of second squad. She better keep an eye on them.

The thirty year old sergeant looked at the gathering. There was a young girl at the center of it, obvious earth bender, but what caught Minh's eye was the young man next to the bender.

He was young, only a young man could carry all those weapons and equipment for any distance and not die, and only a young man would want to. The weapons were interesting. She had never seen a club like that before, nor a machete of that shape. The Jian sword the young man carried on his belt, was covered in canvas. Only a swords man of talent would cover his sword to protect it. Everyone else would want to display the weapon. Then there was the dark skin, and the eyes, oh yes the eyes, those dark blue eyes that drew you in.

Minh noticed him loosen his sword in its scabbard. She only noticed because she was looking for it. Then she saw him blink, not really blink, but close and open his eyes slowly. Then she saw a small smile quirk up the corner of his mouth. She knew that smile. The sergeant had felt it on her own face only a few times. It had been right before a battle when she knew the outcome before the fight had even begun.

First Sergeant Minh had to end this now. If she didn't this market would be filled with the dead, the dying, and the maimed. That young man was death on two feet.

* * *

"Second Squad Atennnntion!" The First Sergeant's voice rang out.

Training kicked in, as it was meant to, and the seven troopers immediately stood up straight, heels together, feet at a forty-five degree angle, stomach in, chest out, head erect, and fingers joined in their natural curl.

Toph turned toward the voice that had shouted out the command. Sokka's eyes flicked in Minh's direction but his attention stayed focused on the group in front of him.

The sergeant began to march across the market while using her most intimidating parade ground voice on them.

"Private Qi!" She called out.

Sokka heard a whispered,

"Fuck!"

From one of the troopers. The tribesman assumed, correctly in this case, that it was ex-corporal Qi who had said it.

"Private Qi, you will march your squad, in proper military order, if they are even capable of it, back to barracks where you and they will be ready for a full inspection by fifteen hundred hours."

There was a suppressed moan from the troopers.

"And if there are any deficiencies don't worry, you will have plenty of time to correct them, since you will be restricted to quarters for the next forty-eight hours. "

That brought another muffled groan from the seven men.

The First Sergeant was now standing right next to Mr.-Way-With-Women, and although she was shorter than he was, she tilted her head and shouted directly into his ear,

"Private Bai, stand fast! Second squad about… FACE!"

The six other troopers spun around and were now facing away from the tribesman and the young earthbender.

"PRIVATE Qi, Take charge of your squad and carry out your orders!" Minh commanded.

"Second squad, fall in, column of twos, on me." The ex-corporal called out.

There was a bustle of movement then the six men were formed in two lines.

"Forward… MARCH!"

And the six walked away in lock step.

Sergeant Minh, who had ignored all the activity of the other men continued to stare at private Bai. Her nose was only millimeters from the young man's ear.

"Private Bai" She shouted. "You will introduce yourself to this nice young couple!"

"Nice young couple" The young man said.

But before he could continue the sergeant screamed,

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"Nice young couple" He shouted this time but was interrupted again.

"THE NICE YOUNG COUPLE CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"I can hear him fine" Toph offered, but she was ignored.

"Nice…"

"THE WOMAN IN THE MOON CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"NICE YOUNG COUPLE, I AM PRIVATE BAI SECOND SQUAD…"

"Apologize!" The sergeant cut him off again. "For being such a total dick!"

"NICE YOUNG COUPLE" Bai shouted. "I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING SUCH A TOTAL DICK!"

Toph actually had her fingers in her ears at this point.

"Perhaps you should offer to buy them lunch, private to make amends." Minh suggested.

"Nice young couple," Bai said, in a more reasonable tone. "Will you please join me for lunch, to show there are no hard feelings."

"Sure!" Toph said, before Sokka could decline.

"Private Bai." The First Sergeant said. "Have you forgotten that you are restricted to quarters for the next forty-eight hours. You can't go to lunch. Now if you ask nicely perhaps your First Sergeant will be kind enough to escort your guests for you, to say Hong Fats?"

Minh had just named the most expensive restaurant in the market.

"Thank you First Sergeant." Was all that private Bai said.

"Well since you ask so nicely I'll do it. Now return to barracks you ass rag!" The non com ordered.

The trooper about faced and began to march out of the market.

"AT THE DOUBLE!" Minh shouted.

Bai took off at a run.

The First Sergeant turned to the Nice Young Couple and asked,

"How about some lunch?"

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I have to apologize to Toph, she really wanted to crack some heads, well maybe next time I can have some action for her.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again. Especially to LadyWinterFic who reviewed six times, those were awesome.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Gina: I replied to your personal account I hope you were able to get in and read it.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	20. Chapter 20

I'll Walk You Home pt 20

Chapter 8

pt. 2

The Ladies Room

* * *

"Do you have a reservation?" Dingxian, the Maitre d'hôtel of Hong Fat's asked the trio standing in front of him.

He had used his level eight voice of disdain on them. He could have gone all the way to level ten on this group; they were the most disreputable customers he had ever seen. But if he had used level ten, then he would have had no were to go, if they did not slink out of the restaurant immediately after admitting that they had no reservation.

The leader appeared to be some sort of soldier, enlisted not even an officer. With the bare feet and broad shoulders, she was probably an earth bender, but that would get her nowhere with Dingxian.

The other two were beyond belief. They looked like positive vagabonds, who actually slept in ditches by the side of the road, and they stank as if they hadn't bathed for a month. They were sunburned and their clothes were filthy. At least the girl was sunburned, the boy might actually be that color naturally. HE certainly did not belong in Hong Fat's. His outfit was mind numbingly ridiculous; he looked like an itinerant weird weapons salesman, with all his worldly possessions on his back. His face, with the roundish eyes, the strong nose and chin, and dark skin, which couldn't all be sunburn, had a feral look to it.

_Oh Oma!_ Dingxian thought as the dark young man pushed his hand through the bias of his robe near his belt, _speaking of feral he even has fleas!._ A violent shudder ran through the Maitre d, and his skin began to crawl. As soon as he could get rid of this trio he would need to get Fu to relieve him so he could take a bath.

* * *

Minh knew this was a mistake as soon as she walked in the door of this place. The dim lighting, the dark green leather upholstery in the booths, the white on white table cloths, this was not her kind of place. She had spent months in the field during the war, and was used to the dirt and stink of unwashed troops. Seeing and, truth be told smelling, the two travelers had actually made her nostalgic for the time when troopers mattered. The sergeant remembered a time not so long ago when her troopers would be welcomed into a town or village. She longed for the time when the army was treated as heroes and liberators. Now with the war over, the civilians treated them as a problem, as scum to be avoided, except on pay day.

* * *

Toph took in the smells of the restaurant. She smelled the polish, the leather, the starch, and the smells from the kitchen. It smelled like a three star that was trying to be a four.

The floor was stone but the walls, tables, and furniture were made of wood, so she was only able to get a general sense of the layout of the place.

The Maitre d' sounded like a four star trying to be a five. _This should be fun_ she told herself, with a little smile, and waited for Sokka to go into his act.

* * *

The young warrior took in the restaurant and the Maitre d'. Right after the war, in the Fire Nation Capital, he had taken Suki to a fancy place to celebrate. It had been a complete disaster. Neither one of them knew how to behave in such a shi shi eatery. It was one embarrassment and snub after another, until he had had to chase after his girlfriend, who almost ran out of the restaurant in tears.

When the GAang had gotten to Ba Sing Se Sokka had wanted to make it up to the Kyoshi Warrior, so he had asked the one person he always went to for help, the blind earthbender. Much to his disappointment Toph was not able to give him much in the way of advice. Madame Wang had trained her how to act in a restaurant, but the young girl had never been taken out to one by her family. The only time she had gone out had been with Sokka, and the rest of the GAang.

Mai had been the one to come to the young man's rescue, thanks to Toph. The two girls had become friends, mostly by comparing and then complaining about their teachers of etiquette.

The dour young woman had been to many fine restaurants with her family. She had instructed Sokka on all the fine points of how to act, and the most important part, how to bribe the staff.

Mai, Zuko, Toph, and Sokka had gone out to a number of swanky places in the upper ring. The tribesman watched and learned, until he could lead the party. After Mai and her boyfriend returned to the Fire Nation, Sokka had offered to take Suki out to a fancy place, but the Kyoshi Warrior had declined. She had no desire to repeat the previous embarrassment.

Eventually the tribesman had found a Kyoshi restaurant that Suki liked in the middle ring, and they would go out to it around once a week. But at least once a month the young man and the blind earthbender still went to some five star establishment. They had a good time "goofing" on the staff, ordering strange dishes from the kitchen, they usually liked the food, but mostly they enjoyed the time with each other.

Sokka reached into his robe for his money belt.

* * *

Minh was about to suggest that the three of them should try this noodle stand she liked when the Earth Kingdom soldier noticed the expression change on the snooty asshole running Hong Fat's. His eyes, which had been looking over her head, were now staring fixedly at her male companion's waist. She looked over and saw that the young warrior had a silver coin in his hand and he was rolling it over his knuckles, passing it over the top of his fist.

It wasn't just a silver coin, but one of the large ones, that was a week's pay for a trooper. Minh felt her own expression change as she watched. That was a lot of money for such a young man traveling on foot to have. There was more to this young warrior than what met the eye, and what met the eye was pretty good as far as the sergeant was concerned.

"Reservation?" The young man asked the air. "Do I have a reservation? Well to be honest I have more than one, actually I have a lot of reservations, especially about any place that would seat me."

"I know that if I saw you in a restaurant" The young girl with them joined the conversation, "I wouldn't go in."

"That's no fair, you know me." The tribesman responded in a hurt tone to the jibe.

"It's just lucky that I'm blind," was the small earthbender's reply. "If I could actually see you eat, well the sound alone is enough to put me off food for a week."

_Wait a second!_ Minh thought, _did the little one just say she was blind?_

"Every cloud…, as the saying goes." The young man shot back. "Speaking of silver sandwiches, do you know of any good noodle stands around here?"

This last he directed at Minh, as he said it he had reached into his robe to scratch his stomach, in a very obvious and crude manner, but when his hand returned it now contained two of the large silver coins.

The sergeant had a feeling that this was something of an act the two young people had used many times in the past. She noticed the look of interest, and greed, on the Maitre d's face, with the appearance of the second coin.

"If sir is looking for a silver sandwich" Dingxian jumped into the conversation, though he had no idea what such a thing might be. "I am sure our chef would be more than willing to do any special orders sir and his guests might require."

"Oh… your kitchen is able to do special orders?" The warrior asked, turning to the Maitre d'. "Well we are already here after all. But I was wondering. Your booths, are the benches wood or stone?"

"Wood sir." Dingxian answered.

"The tables and chairs, wood or stone?" The blind earthbender asked.

"Wood… ah…" The older man replied, searching for a proper title for the young girl, finally settling on "Miss."

"Oh…" The young man said in a disappointed tone.

He folded his arms across his chest and looked to his younger companion. Shaking his head he said,

"Too bad, this looked like a nice place."

"Yeah," was the young girl's only comment.

"How odd, especially for an Earth Kingdom restaurant." The First Sergeant added thoughtfully.

Minh was starting to get the hang of this game the two were playing, at least she thought she had.

"Well it has to be expected," The young man said. "What with the occupation by the Fire Army."

The cavalry non-com noted that this last shot had struck home with the snooty asshole. No one wanted to get the reputation of being a collaborator, now that the Earth Kingdom was back in charge.

"Hong Fat's has always had… well… wood décor has always figured highly here…" The Maitre d' started to reply.

Dingxian saw that big tip walking out the door, and a reputation of being a Fire Army establishment, which in fact it had been during the occupation, driving off any chances for future tips. He had to do something to seat this party.

"But if sir and his honored guests would prefer something more … down to earth… as it were, I am sure we could arrange something, anything for our victorious soldiers and their friends." The older man said, indicating the First Sergeant.

"I don't know…" The young man said.

"The food smells good." The young girl offered.

"We're already here." Minh added.

"I guess we could take a booth, lose the table and chairs, and you two could bend replacements." The tribesman suggested.

"Oh yes that would be no problem at all." The Maitre d' offered.

Sokka unfolded his arms and as he did so he opened his hand to reveal that there were three large silver coins in it.

"I guess that's ok." He said. "We'd like three for lunch then."

"Certainly sir." Dingxian bowed, then turned and signaled for a waiter. "It will take us a few minutes to make the arrangements, please feel free to wait in the lounge and order some drinks, and I'll come for you, when everything is ready."

The Maitre d' led them to a door off to the side which led to a pleasant room with overstuffed chairs. Sokka surreptitiously slipped him the three coins as he entered. The three went in, un-slung their various weapons and packs, and sat down. Soon a young man came in and asked if they would like anything to drink. They each ordered tea, black for Minh, Jasmine for the younger girl, and Kyoshi Green for the young man.

Minh examined the Nice Young Couple with new eyes. The way they had worked together against the older man, the money they obviously had at their disposal, and the young girl's blindness. These things were adding up for the soldier, but she was not sure yet. At first she had taken the two of them to be a pair of the tens of thousands of war orphans roaming the land, but now a new idea was starting to creep into her mind and a lot of questions as well.

_Divide and conquer_. The First Sergeant told herself, then she said,

"Well I think I'll visit the ladies room, how about you Toph?"

It took Minh a moment to remember the young girl's name. They had introduced themselves in the market, but the non-com had trained herself to retain names and faces. She needed it in her line of work.

The blind earthbender thought a second and then said,

"Sure." She stood up to follow the soldier.

"Watch our stuff, ok Sokka?" The sergeant asked the young man.

Minh could see the tension in the warrior as he saw the two of them about to leave. She realized that the tribesman did not like letting the young girl out of his sight. She knew of a couple of reasons why a man did not want to let a girl leave his control. She was not sure what this man's reason was, but she was going to find out.

Her first test was to raise her right fist and point the thumb to her own chest, then to use two fingers to point to her eyes, then to point with all her fingers at the young earthbender. The young warrior seemed to get the idea. He nodded his understanding, and the sergeant saw him force himself to relax into his chair. She knew that feeling, having felt it every time she had sent some of her troopers out on a dangerous mission that she could not personally lead. The young man was protective of the girl, not frightened of what the girl might do or say when she was out of his sight. Minh was glad to see that this man had passed the test. She was starting to like this young warrior.

"No problem" The dark skinned youth finally said.

* * *

Once the girls left Sokka, stood up and began to pace around the room. He couldn't just sit there. _What if something happens to her?_ He wondered, thinking of his young friend. Anytime she was out of arm's reach he got nervous and frightened for her. He picked up his sword and held it in his left hand ready to draw it at any need, while he continued to pace.

_I could follow them just to make sure she is ok._ He thought. _No!_ He told himself. Toph will be fine. He trusted the First Sergeant, _what was her name?_ Even though he had just met her, the soldier seemed like someone he could trust. He liked the older woman's style, the way she had handled her troops had spoken volumes. Besides his friend was the greatest bender in the world, and now that she was no longer messed up on cactus juice, there was no one in the world, except maybe Aang, who could take her on. Toph could take care of herself.

The young man forced himself to sit down again and wait patiently for the girls return, but he kept his sword in his left hand ready to draw at the slightest need.

* * *

"Where is the ladies room?" Minh asked as she and Toph entered the main lobby of Hong Fat's.

"It's over this way." The younger earthbender said pointing down a hall ahead of them.

"How do you know?" The non-com asked.

"Running water!" Was the blind girl's terse reply, as she began to walk down the hall.

Toph was a little unsure of herself in this place. There were a lot of carpets over the stone floor, which deadened her ability to feel, and all of the wooden walls, and furniture were not helping either. But she had sensed the water running under the building when she had first come into it.

Minh reached out and took the young girls arm to stop her. She wanted to know how a blind girl knew where anything was in this building.

The master bender wrenched her arm out of the solder's grasp, and turned, fluidly shifting into an aggressive bending stance, aimed at the sergeant.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" The girl shouted.

"Sorry!" Minh said, backing away and holding up her hands in surrender.

"My goodness!" Dingxian exclaimed.

The First sergeant turned her head to see the Maitre d' backed up against a wall with his hands in the air, and there in the door way of the lounge was the young warrior, legs bent, sword out, held low but ready to strike. The soldier blinked for an instant, in the dim light, she thought she saw the face of a snarling wolf superimposed over that of the young warrior's handsome countenance. It was gone in an instant. But she was sure she saw death in his impossibly blue eyes.

"It's ok Stupid!" The blind earthbender said in a loud voice. "Go back in your cage, I'm fine and can take care of myself."

"You sure?" The tribesman asked.

"I'm fine asshole!" The young girl said with vehemence.

As the swordsman stood up straight, Minh saw a flash of light as the sword spun in the warrior's hand. The sword was now in its scabbard, the last few centimeters slowly setting the blade in place. There was no flamboyance, or show in his blind re-sheathing of the weapon, just hours and hours of practice. _Oh yeah, I have GOT to get a chance to play with this guy._ She told herself, as she watched the young man go back into the lounge, and the snooty Maitre d' peel himself off of the wall.

"Sorry your highness." The sergeant told the young earthbender.

"Don't call me that." The girl said, while coming out of her stance.

"Ok Princess." Was the soldier's reply.

"I'm not a princess!" The blind earthbender said as she started down the hall again.

_Maybe not but you are a bitch._ Minh thought. _And if you want to play whose the bitchier bitch you've come to the right place._ Aloud the sergeant asked,

"So you and him, what's the story, he your boyfriend or something?"

"No!" was the quick reply. "I can't stand that stupid perv."

"Perv?" The soldier asked, serious now. "Did he do something, or try something with you? If he did just tell me and I'll have him locked up in a second, and we'll cut his balls off. We are under martial law here and I can do it."

Toph was surprised by the sergeant's reaction. She rather liked the idea of locking Sokka up, he had embarrassed her beyond all belief, but even if he had undressed her, he had done it out of wanting to help her not because he actually was a perv.

Also she was not sure what this "cutting balls off" was all about. She had overheard enough conversations between the boys, well mostly Sokka and Zuko actually, to know that balls were important to boys, but what they actually were was beyond her knowledge. Finally she decided that while Sokka was an asshole and an idiot, he really wasn't a perv.

"No, he didn't do anything." The metalbender told the soldier. "He's actually ok, just a total wimp and really, really stupid."

"Alright." The first sergeant replied. "But if anyone tries anything you let me know. I don't put up with any of that shit."

The two of them reached the end of the hall and Toph reached for the handle to open one of two doors.

"That's the boys' room." The older woman informed her.

"Well I had a fifty-fifty chance." The young girl said as she moved to the other door, and went in, followed by the soldier.

* * *

Sokka sat in the lounge, with his sword across his knees, just in case, and thought about girls and peeing. The tea had finally come and he was holding a cup of his green in his left hand, just in case, and waited for it to cool.

He knew that girls could pee by themselves, they didn't need help, except that one time when he and Katara were kids, he had had to help his sister write her name in the snow, but that was a special occasion. Normally Katara and Toph, when they were camping, would go off and pee by themselves. But get into a restaurant and it seemed that they couldn't go to the potty without someone with them.

Maybe it was something about Ladies Rooms that required at least two people. Or maybe it was a meeting place for a secret order, like the order of the White Lotus. Yeah that could be it. There must be a secret society of just girls, and their meeting place was in Ladies Rooms in restaurants. He would have to check it out. Yeah… he could put on his Kyoshi Warrior outfit and sneak in as a girl and find out. But if he got caught that could be bad. They would probably cut his balls off or something. No he decided he couldn't risk the boys on such a mission.

* * *

Minh stopped when she walked through the door. They had to be in the wrong place. She checked the characters on the door, and sure enough they read "Ladies Room", but this couldn't be right. She had never seen such a beautiful room in her life. For a woman who had spent her childhood in a small farming village with nothing but dark dank outhouses and all of her adult life in the army with its' dark dank latrines that smelled of piss and shit. This brightly lit room that smelled of incense and perfume was not a place for taking care of business.

The room was large, almost as large as a squad bay in a barracks. There were frosted windows at the top of the outside wall, and even a sky light in the ceiling. There were also glow crystals in sconces everywhere.

Along one wall there was a line of clean, polished wash basins, and above the basins was a long line of the finest mirrors the soldier had ever seen. Even from here she could not see any distortion, and the mirrors themselves appeared to be made of glass. The First Sergeant had never seen so many mirrors in one place in her life.

Along the opposite wall there appeared to be a row of little rooms, or closets. M_aybe changing rooms?_ She asked herself. There was also the sound of running water coming from that part of the room.

Next to the door there was a little station with a kettle on a charcoal brazier, and white towels laid out in neat rows, alternating with bowls of water. The smell of incense was coming from the brazier. There was also a chair with an older woman sitting in it. The woman handed Minh two towels, one warm and moist, the other warm and dry. The soldier took them, thanked the woman, and hurried after the small earthbender. She had never felt anything so soft in her life, and they smelled clean, and was that a hint of lavender?

"What are these for?" The sergeant whispered to the younger girl.

"Moist for wiping, and dry for drying." The blind girl answered.

Toph slid the door open to one of the "Changing Rooms" and went in. Minh almost went in with her, but the little earthbender indicated the next room down. The soldier slid the door open and peeked in, the sight took her breath away. For a woman who had spent her adult life squatting over stinking holes in latrine floors, or over shallow open trenches in the field, or more commonly behind every bush and tree between here and Omashu and back again, who had actually learned how to hang her bare butt off of the side of her saddle, with one foot in the stirrup, and one on the rump of her Ostrich/horse, so she would not slow the company on the march, the sight before her caused her to experience an epiphany. She resolved then and there, if she were within five "klicks" of Hong Fat's, then this was the place where she was going to piss and shit.

* * *

While Sokka was waiting for the "Ladies" to return from their secret meeting, a young man came into the lounge and announced,

"I'm Lee, and I will be your abject slave this afternoon."

"Not funny" The young warrior replied in a flat voice.

"Yes sir, sorry." The waiter lost his smile. "Is there anything I can get you while we are waiting for your booth to be… made ready."

"We'll have a pu pu platter for starters, heavy on the meat items."

"I am sorry sir, but we don't have a pu pu platter here at Hong Fat's…"

"You do now!" The tribesman said cutting the waiter off. "Just ask what's his name out front."

"Yes sir a pu pu platter for three, heavy on the meat." The waiter replied.

"Make it for five." The young warrior said in a lighter tone.

"Ah, is sir expecting two more in your party?"

"No!"

"Pu pu for five, heavy on the meat. A wonderful choice sir."

Lee left the room.

* * *

Minh sat and pissed. _What a concept, why didn't I ever think of this before? There are going to be some changes at the barracks._ Her only regret was that she didn't have to take a shit. Now that would be something, to be able to actually sit down while shitting.

"So Princess…" The sergeant said but was cut off by her younger companion.

"I'm not a princess." The metal bender said.

"Right, so Princess, your not-a-boyfriend is a wimp and really, really stupid, right?"

"Yeah!"

"But you two are fighters right?"

"Yeah!"

Minh finished and wiped herself with the small still warm, moist towel. _Oma and Shu._ The cavalry sergeant had never felt anything so soft and wonderful in her life. She had spent her life using her hand, leaves, sticks, and rocks to wipe herself. She had finally gotten a rag that she carried around in a small pouch at her belt that she would wash out at night for the next day. She was quiet for a few moments while she made sure she did a really, really good job.

When she reluctantly finished, she looked around for someplace to put the used towel, she saw a small bucket on the floor by the door. She tossed the towel in and dried herself with the warm dry small towel. _Maybe I could retire here._ She would be up for retirement in about twenty years. She seriously thought about saving up and buying one of these little rooms. Maybe the restaurant would deliver her meals here and she would never have to leave.

Finally the soldier was finished and stood up, rearranged her breach cloth and pulled up her pants. She said a silent good bye to the best piss she had ever had in her life and opened the door.

The younger earthbender was already at one of the basins on the opposite wall, washing her hands. The "Aide?" was standing there with the kettle with a helpful look on her face. Minh saw no reason to wash her hands. Because of the towels she had not really gotten anything on her hands, she had only touched herself, but it seemed to be expected so she pointed to one of the basins next to her new companion. The aide poured the hot water into the left hand pitcher at that basin.

The First Sergeant had this figured out. She poured water from both pitchers into the basin until it was at a temperature she liked. Then she dipped her hands in. She looked over to the girl, and saw that she had something light pink in her hand, which the girl then put on the side of her basin. The soldier looked to the side of her basin and saw a small pink shell, she picked it up and sniffed it. It didn't smell like soap, it smelled like roses. _Oh yeah, I am going to retire here!_

Picking up the string of her conversation from before the sergeant asked the young girl,

"So both of you are fighters, right?"

"Yeah." The blind earthbender said.

Toph having washed her hands now began to wash her face and neck to get rid of the road dirt.

"So Princess, are you an exhibition fighter or a combat fighter?" Minh asked, taking advantage of the girl's soapy condition, which prevented her from cutting the soldier off.

Finally Toph rinsed off and took a towel offered by the attendant, and while drying herself off asked the sergeant,

"What do you mean?"

"Well are you an exhibition fighter, someone who fights in tournaments and contests, or a combat fighter who fought in the war."

"I do both." Was the young girl's reply.

The way she said it caused the soldier to ask a follow up question,

"But mostly exhibition, right?"

"Yeah, mostly, but I fought in the war too." Toph answered, a little defensively.

"And were you any good? Did you win a lot?"

"I only lost once." The small earthbender answered testily. "And he cheated, he used Airbending."

"You mean the Avatar?" The sergeant asked surprised. "So the only fight you ever lost was to the Avatar?"

"Yeah" Toph answered with pride in her voice.

"And in these fights did you ever get hurt?"

"Me? Never, I was too good."

Minh finished washing her own hands and used the cold water to rinse them off. The attendant handed her a towel, then reached over and pulling a handle tipped the basin so the water collected in it automatically spilled out into a drain.

"Well isn't that clever." Minh said, she had never seen anything like that before.

"Oh yeah, Stupid would love this place." The young girl said handing the dirty towel to the attendant.

"He likes bath rooms?"

"He likes stuff like that drain." The small earthbender said. "He even invented this rain bath thing, that poured hot water on you while you washed."

"That sounds pretty good?"

"Yeah it was better than pouring a bucket of cold water over your head."

Minh handed her towel to the attendant, then asked,

"Now your not-a-boyfriend, was he an exhibition or a combat fighter?"

"Meathead?" Toph almost laughed. "He wouldn't last five seconds in an Earthrumble."

"So strictly a combat fighter."

"Yeah, I guess so." The metalbender said as she began to walk toward the door.

"Did he win a lot?"

"Meathead?" The young girl laughed. "He always got his butt wiped. His girlfriend used to bust his nose like once a week in training fights. Even when he won he'd get himself hurt. That thing he wears on his leg. He invented that because he broke his leg while falling off of a Fire Nation air ship in the war."

"So this really, really stupid guy who invents all sorts of clever stuff, is a wimp who loses all the time and gets seriously injured but he keeps fighting no matter how badly he gets beaten, is that about right?"

"Yeah." Toph answered. "What are you trying to say?" _Bitch!_

"Oh nothing." Minh replied. "Just trying to get to know you both better is all." _Bitch!_

As they approached the door, the small earthbender reached into her belt, and counting down the pockets pulled out two small silver coins.

"I've got this." She said as she dropped the coins into a fire baked clay bowl on the attendant's table.

The older woman thanked her and then offered a small vial of some liquid to the young earthbender. The girl sniffed it and nodded and the attendant pulled the stopper, and offered it to the girl who touched it behind each ear, then to the base of her throat. The attendant took the stopper back and replaced it in the vial. She then offered a different vial to Minh, who mimicked her companion.

"Thank you." The First Sergeant said as they left the ladies room.

The soldier looked back longingly at the door as it closed.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

"You don't know what you've got till its gone"

Minh will get a chance to spar with Sokka, they may even get a chance to use their swords.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	21. Chapter 21

I'll Walk You Home pt 21

Chapter 8

pt. 3

Pu Pu Platter

* * *

Sokka stood up when the girls returned to the lounge. Minh noted that the tribesman held his sword in his left hand, ready for instant use, as he stood by his chair. Toph walked past him and sat in the chair she had used before.

The young warrior noticed, when the metalbender walked past him, that his younger companion smelled really good, like honeysuckle or something. He was distracted from this line of inquiry when the First Sergeant walked past him, heading for the writing desk in the far corner of the lounge. The soldier, the young man realized, smelled really good too. The aroma of something like musky roses was coming off of the woman.

The swordsman surreptitiously sniffed himself, which caused his nose to wrinkle and his eyes to water. _Oh, not good!_ He thought.

"Excuse me, I need to write a note." Minh told the two younger people, as she sat down at the desk, and pulled a piece of paper from the stack.

The First Sergeant noted the letter head of Hong Fat's on the paper. _Well this will get a comment or two when Platoon Sergeant Hu gets it._ She thought.

Just as the young man was sitting down again, the Maitre d' entered, and with an unctuous manner announced,

"Your room is ready, I hope it will be satisfactory, please follow me."

The soldier turned in her high backed chair and said,

"You two go ahead, I'll catch you up as soon as I finish this."

"Certainly," Dingxian said. "I will come back and escort the lady, as soon as she is ready."

Sokka looked to Toph who shrugged, and answered her with his own shrug. The two young people picked up their gear and followed the Maitre d' out into the dining area. The young man made quite an interesting sight as he crossed the main dining room, with all his weapons and bags and packs. He could see that the restaurant was almost empty. Only one table had an older couple sitting at it. It seemed that the trio had come between the end of lunch and the beginning of dinner.

Across the main room, the tribesman could see three smaller rooms built into the far wall. Each had a bead curtain closing the archway from the main area. The small procession was heading for the center room which was the largest of the three. Sokka could see two men in white coats and black pants hurriedly setting the table. Standing to one side of the entrance was a largish man in green who looked impatient to be on his way. He had the look of an earthbender about him.

The room contained a large round table covered with a white cloth. Built out from the back wall was a booth like bench that could seat three comfortably, or one regally, around the open side of the table were five earth bent chairs. On the wall above the bench was a portrait of King Kuei; it looked new and was not a good likeness. On the other two walls were the large earth bent coins of the Earthkingdom. They didn't quite fit the faded marks on the wall. Sokka suspected that they were replacing the stylized flames of the Fire Nation.

The Maitre d' shooed the two waiters out of the room and led the warrior and the metalbender into it. Dingxian indicated the bench for them to sit in, but Toph took the center chair. Sokka would have preferred it if she had gone to the bench, the chair put her back to the archway and the main room. He sat on the left most, as you faced it, edge of the bench so he could watch the dining area and have his right arm free, just in case.

The little earthbender sat in the center chair for a moment then, at a gesture of her hands, the chair sank into the floor, and with a new movement, a new, larger chair, with a platform around it rose up out of the stone floor, right under her. Another small movement of her hands, and the chair slid into the table. The new chair was actually shorter than the old one, but with the raised dais under it, the chair actually was closer to the table, and it also allowed the young earthbender to have her feet rest on the stone of the platform.

"Your waiter will be with you momentarily" The Maitre d' informed them. "Will there be anything else?"

The young warrior looked to his friend as she rested her hand on the table for a moment, then she turned in his general direction and with a nod indicated that she was satisfied.

"This is fine." Sokka answered. "Thank you."

Dingxian bowed to the couple and left the room. The large earthbender held his hand out, as the Maitre d' passed, and the elegantly dressed man motioned for the working man to follow him out to the front of the restaurant.

Just as the tribesman had gotten his gear arranged on the floor by his end of the bench, their waiter Lee arrived.

"Your appetizers will be right here." The white coated young man informed them. "Would you like more tea?" He then asked.

Toph nodded and Sokka said,

"Yes please."

"That was Jasmine for the lady and Kyoshi Green for the gentleman." Lee said.

"I'll have oolong with the meal." The metalbender told him.

"And our companion was drinking black." The Young warrior added.

"Yes sir, thank you sir." Lee said, bowing himself out of the room.

The two friends sat in silence for a minute, then the earthbender asked,

"What's she like?"

Sokka, who had been counting entrances, and finding the nearest exit, was taken by surprise, and said,

"Sorry?"

"Her Deafness." His young companion answered. "The Little Soldier Girl."

"Oh, sergeant… Minh." _I think that's her name._ "She seems nice enough."

"No Stupid." Toph said, in her mind she heard the soldier say_"… who invents all this clever stuff." _But she pushed it aside. "What's she look like?"

"Oh I don't know." The tribesman answered.

The warrior had not really looked at the woman. In her uniform she was just a "Soldier" to him. Now that the metalbender had asked he called up an image of her in his mind and examined it.

"Well she's taller than you, but shorter than me." He finally said. "Maybe about Katara's height, or just a little taller."

The tall young man could just see over the sergeant's head.

"She has light brown hair." He remembered.

She wore it in a long plaited cue that ran down her back, all the way past her tight round butt. _Stop that! Well it is tight and round at the same time. You don't often see that._

"She has a sort of a round face." He continued, working his way down.

_After going back up you mean!_ He chided himself. She had hazel eyes. He had also noticed that the soldier had two small scars from cuts, one breaking her left eyebrow, and one on her chin. She also had a small burn scar low on her left cheek. The woman had obviously been in combat against firebenders.

"She has broad shoulders and strong arms, like an earthbender." He went on. "And strong looking legs. She's old, well older, well not as old as my dad, but not that young."

"Is she pretty?" The young earthbender asked.

The fifteen year old thought about the question for a moment, pretty did not seem like the right word to describe the sergeant. She was certainly attractive, but pretty seemed too inconsequential a word to describe her. She was strong and confident in herself, sure and commanding. Physically she was daunting but not "pretty". Finally the tribesman answered,

"I would say that she is a very attractive woman."

Toph did not reply, she just sat and thought about what Sokka had said.

* * *

Minh finished her note, an order really, folded the paper, addressed it and sealed it with wax and her chop. She wore the metal signet on a chain around her neck. As a First Sergeant she could have worn it as a ring, but that was how the officers carried their signets, and she was proud of working for a living.

The soldier left the lounge and asked the Maitre d' to make sure it was delivered right away to Platoon Sergeant Hu of first platoon. The snooty asshole assured her he would. He offered to take her to the private room her two new companions were in.

"Let me get my equipment." She told him. "I'll be right back."

The sergeant returned to the lounge and picked up her sword and helmet. She set them on the writing desk and straightened her uniform. She was proud of being in the cavalry, but she thought, at least for her, the uniform was not very flattering.

_No tits and a big ass, that's me._ Minh thought as she pulled her pants up and her robe down. _It's not like there is going to be an inspection._ She told herself, though she did wish she had one of those big mirrors that were in the Ladies Room. Maybe she could duck down there quickly and check herself out.

_Why?_

_Well one should try to look good, credit to the service and all that._

_He's a teenager, girl! By Oma and Shu you're old enough to be his mother! _

_No I'm not!_

_Considering when you started fooling around, yes you are! _

_Well maybe… but he's water tribe._

She ran a hand down her robe, smoothing the material. She felt the small bulge of her stomach. She was starting to get a belly and she did not like it, but no matter how many sit ups she did it was still there every morning.

_And you're about to go eat again!_

With a sad sigh, she picked up her helmet and sword and started out of the lounge.

* * *

The two young people looked up as Minh stepped through the bead curtain into the private dining room.

"Everything ok?" The swordsman asked her as she sat down on the opposite end of the bench.

"Fine." She replied. "I just had to make arrangements about that inspection this afternoon. I don't think I'm going to be back in time to conduct it myself."

"Oh yeah, it's already past fourteen hundred." The young man said.

Toph was about to say something but was interrupted by Lee returning with a large Lazy-Susan piled high with appetizers. The waiter moved the center piece while balancing the tray on one hand; he then set it down in the center of the table. The food smelled delicious.

"The tea will be here presently. Are you ready to order, or do you still need a few minutes?" Lee asked.

"I'm good to go, if you two are." Minh told her companions.

The young man looked to the girl, who nodded in reply.

"We'll order now." The tribesman told the waiter.

While they placed their orders another server arrived with the tea. Each received their own steaming pot and a cup.

Each of the women ordered a single dish; the young man ordered three different dishes. The Chow Fun and the fried rice were,

"… for the table" he explained.

Once they were alone again, the sergeant took the opportunity to inspect the table. By looking under the cloth she could see that it was a stone table raised by bending directly from the floor of the restaurant. It was a good job, though it looked a little rushed. The sound of the young man's voice caused her to look up.

The blind girl was slowly spinning the Lazy-Susan and the tribesman was telling her what was in each tray of the platter.

"Paper wrapped something. The next tray to the right has the sauce dishes."

He continued on through all the appetizers on the platter. Minh noted that the way he did it was not condescending, but done in a straightforward matter of fact manner. Like two well trained squad members working on a task together. The two of them had been through this before, perhaps many times. Any time the girl had a question, she would simply look toward the young man and he would answer it for her without needing her to say anything. They worked perfectly together with very few words passing between them.

Once the blind girl had run through the platter and taken what she wanted, the young man made a gesture to the First Sergeant to help herself. Minh looked at the platter for the first time and was shocked into silence. It was full of meat. Fried Wontons, Paper Wrapped Chicken/pig, dumplings, skewers of hippo/cow, skewers of goose/duck. The soldier had never seen so much cooked meat in her life. In the earth kingdom most people lived on cereal grains. Rice if they could get it, but wheat, barley, and oats most of the time. The army lived on porridge with rice maybe once a week and meat maybe once or twice a month. She was looking at about two weeks of her pay, just in cooked meat.

"It's all meat!" She said, as she started to tentatively pull a fried wonton off of the tray.

"He's water tribe, that's all he eats, usually raw." The blind girl said. "Why do you think I call him Meathead."

Minh had heard about the water tribes only eating raw meat. It was supposed to make their women more sensual, and their men more virile.

"I love a nice piece of meat." The sergeant said, while looking directly at the young tribesman.

_Did I really just say that?_ The soldier asked herself, as she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. _Stop it; you're acting like a fourteen year old girl at her first village dance._ She chided herself, but it did no good. She quickly looked down at her plate, studying the dumpling she had just placed there. _At least you didn't say … a nice BIG piece of meat._ She consoled herself. _Oh come on, you're a big girl now; you should look him in the eye, smile sexily (however that is done) and lick your lips, or something._ But she decided that that course of action would only make her look like a complete fool, as opposed to simply sounding like one.

"No meat, no meal." The young man said.

"He's full of happy little sayings like that." The young girl informed the woman.

Minh snuck a peek at the young man across from her. He seemed to be rooting around in his pack beside him, and was not even looking at her. She decided it was safe to come out now and raised her head, just in time for the handsome tribesman to catch her eye. He pointed to her. _Oh no!_ She thought, he's going to… what? She didn't know what he was going to do, but she had a feeling it was going to be embarrassing. The young swordsman then pointed two fingers at his own eyes, he then pointed to the young blind girl who made up the third angle of the triangle the three of them were seated in. _He wants me to watch her for him._ The sergeant realized. She breathed a sigh of relief, as she gave him an ok sign. He responded with, a thumbs up.

"If you will excuse me." The young man announced. "I'm going to hit the head for a minute. Go ahead and start without me, I'll be right back."

Toph just waved a half eaten skewer at him, while she chewed on the meat she had already pulled off of it with her teeth.

"No problem." Minh said.

Sokka pulled his ditty bag, which had his shaving and grooming supplies in it, and his clean laundry bag, which was very small and light at the moment, out of his rucksack, grabbed his sword and walked out of the room. He was back in a second and asked,

"Where is the head, by the way?"

The sergeant pointed toward the lobby and said,

"Lobby, long hall, down at the end on the left."

"Thanks, be right back." And the young man was gone again.

Minh used her chop sticks to pull a selection of items from the platter while she observed to her younger tablemate,

"Stupid seems like a nice enough guy."

"Don't call him that!" Toph replied through the meat in her mouth. "He's not stupid, that's just a name I have for him."

"You have a lot of names for him." The soldier replied. "Stupid, Wimp, Meathead, Perv."

The young girl swallowed, put her hands on the table, looked at the woman, and with irritation in her voice told her,

"I already told you he's not a perv, he's a nice guy who's never tried anything with me! OK? And so I have a lot of names for him, what's the big deal?" _Bitch!_

"No biggy!" Was the soldier's reply. "Just something I noticed is all."

There was silence between the two except for the aggressive crunching as the blind earthbender ate a fried wonton.

Minh picked up a dumpling with her chop sticks and dipped it in the small sauce dish and took a bite. She closed her eyes unconsciously in pleasure and a tiny moan escaped between her closed lips as she ate. Before she had even swallowed the first bite she stuffed the rest of the dumpling into her mouth. _Oma!_ She thought. _It must be nice to be rich, and eat like this all the time._ The food was delicious.

Once the sergeant swallowed she turned to the girl and asked in a matter of fact manner,

"So how old is he?"

_Oh that was subtle!_ Her common sense screamed at her.

The soldier was a little unnerved by the blind girl, the way she would look at you but not make eye contact.

Toph thought a moment before answering. To be honest she was not sure how old Sokka was. He was older than the metalbender, and older than his sister, who was older than Toph as well, so he had to be pretty old.

"I don't know." She finally said. "Sixteen, seventeen maybe. Why?"

"I don't know." The sergeant responded. "It's just that he looks really young, but there is something about his eyes. They look like they've seen a lot of tough times, like he's been through a lot."

The young earthbender was quiet for a time, just thinking. Finally she said,

"Yeah, he's had it pretty rough, the war and all, you know."

_Stop asking about him!_ Common sense screamed in the soldier's head. _Talk about something else, earthbending or something!_

"So he's not a bender is he?" The older woman asked.

Minh's common sense gave up then, folded her arms, and went off to sulk in a corner of the soldier's mind. Maturity got up with a sigh and came forward then.

"Snoozles, no he's not a bender." Toph replied, but the thought _"I didn't count you, no bending and all,"_ came to the young girl's mind just then.

The First Sergeant's maturity gave Common sense, sulking in the corner, a scornful look and told the thirty year old woman, _All right now. You're a mature woman who has had lots of men, and you're not interested in some teenage boy, so ask her something about herself. The Avatar, that would be a good subject of conversation._

"But you said he was fighter?" The solider asked.

"Yeah, he's really good with his sword." The blind girl answered.

_The sword that he threw away to save you._ A little voice in Toph's head reminded her.

Maturity began to huff about a lot inside Minh's mind. The sergeant decided to shut up for a second, and grabbed one of the skewers, dipped it in the sauce for it and bit off a large chunk.

The young earthbender was quiet for a few seconds, she then also picked up a skewer and began to eat.

With impeccable timing Lee, the young waiter, came through the bead curtain and asked,

"How is everything?"

The two women, their mouths full, made MMMM sounds and nodded their heads to show that everything was fine.

"Excellent" The waiter said. "Your main courses will be right out. Is there something else I can get you, more tea perhaps?"

Minh swallowed the mouthful of half chewed meat and blurted out,

"Could I have some plum wine?"

"Certainly!" Was the young servant's reply. "Would you like a cup, or a carafe?"

The First Sergeant didn't know what a carafe was, but it sounded larger than a cup so she said,

"Carafe please."

"And will that be a half, or a full?"

"Full please." The soldier replied, then added, "And two cups."

"Certainly…?" Lee wasn't certain what title to use for the soldier.

"Miss is fine." Minh replied.

"Certainly Miss, I'll bring it right out."

After the waiter's departure, the young earthbender turned to the older woman and asked,

"Aren't you a little old to be a miss?"

"Never met the right guy, I guess." Was the soldier's sardonic reply. "Met a lot of wrong ones that's for sure."

_Especially that mother fucking, son of a bitch, asshole, Captain, My Lord, Chou._ Minh thought bitterly. _At least that little cock sucker got what was coming to him._ This last thought made the corner of her mouth twitch into a wicked little smile.

"But you like guys, right?" The young girl asked.

_Oma and Shu! _The First Sergeant thought._ Just because I'm not some skinny assed, empty headed, little sperm bank, that screws every guy with a cock…, just because I'm a hard ass who makes my troopers do their jobs, everybody thinks I'm a dyke. Little Princess here is probably wetting her loin cloth, thinking that I am going to hit on her. _Truth be told, she had tried it a couple of times, seeing as how her luck with men had been so bad, and while she had enjoyed it, it just wasn't right for her.

Minh let a little of her bitterness enter her voice as she answered,

"Yeah, I like guys! Princess!"

_At least one guy!_ Toph thought, but she said,

"I'm not a princess!" _You old bitch!_ "Captain Boomerang is the Princess, well Prince anyway."

Minhee the sixteen year old girl, who had left her desperate little village, which was in the middle of "No Fucking Where", to join the army, so she could have adventures, see the world, and meet a beautiful young noble man, fall in love, and live happily ever after, suddenly stood up in the back of First Sergeant Minh's mind and squealed "_PRINCE?"_

Common Sense, Mature, and First Sergeant Minh all shouted at Minhee to _"Put a sock in it."_ Aloud the soldier said,

"Prince?"

Truth be told she squealed just a little when she said it.

"Yeah, his father is the chief of the Water Tribe."

The little earthbender leaned forward on the table, toward the older woman, when she said this last, as if to say, he's way beyond you, hoping the soldier would take the hint. She wasn't going to tell her that Hakoda was actually the chief of the Southern Water Tribe, which as far as Toph knew consisted of only about a dozen families.

Lee returned at that point with the wine the sergeant had requested. He set the carafe down, and the two cups, poured a small amount of the bright red liquid into one of the cups and waited expectantly.

Minh looked at the small amount of wine in the cup and thought _their pretty stingy with their servings here. _She tossed it off in one gulp. It was delicious.

"Not bad." The woman said.

The waiter then took her cup and filled it, he then filled the second cup and gave her an inquiring look. It took her a moment to figure out what he wanted, she then pointed to where the young warrior had been sitting. Lee obediently set down the carafe by the First Sergeant, and took the second cup and set it down by the indicated place setting, bowed and left the two women alone again.

The cavalry sergeant looked at the large glass container of wine. _It must be a full liter._ She thought worriedly. Her Common Sense asked _How are you going to pay for all of this? You don't have this kind of money!_ Minh was getting worried. The young non-couple, were supposed to be her guests, but this was going to cost over a month's pay at this point. Maybe she could charge it to the "Lack of Intelligence Fund". The company had an allotment of money for bribing local officials and to pay off informants to get intelligence and cooperation. Well she was having lunch with two travelers about incidents that had occurred a few days ago in the Si Wong. She was gathering intelligence, the fund should pay for it.

_I think you are losing intelligence the longer you stay around that teenage boy! _Maturity said to her. Common sense piped in sarcastically at the rear of her brain. _Oh she's gathering intelligence alright. Why don't you ask her something you really want to know, like how long his DICK IS?_

The First Sergeant, who had just downed her first full cup of wine, the cups where rather small after all, no point in messing around with sips, and was filling her cup again asked the blind bender,

"So how long is his…"

She was stopped by all the screaming and running around in her head.

Minh downed the second full cup of wine, in order to give her time to think, but it didn't seem to help very much.

"What?" The young girl asked.

_His what? How long is his list of girlfriends?_ Toph asked herself. _Really long and you're not on it!_

"His time… with you… spent… ah… together?" The soldier finally asked.

There was a general sigh of relief in the First Sergeant's mind.

"We met about four or five months ago, during the war." The young bender answered, rolling her eyes.

Lee took that moment to arrive, leading a long line of waiters delivering the main dishes and spreading them about the table. The two women lapsed into silence.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I am sorry this is a day late. For some reason this was a hard chapter for me to write, I hope it works for everyone. I don't know why it is so long, and they haven't even finished lunch yet. I'm too linear probably.

Sokka will be back in the next chapter, and hopefully there will be some action in it as well.

The next chapter will probably not be up for two weeks. Sorry, but my wife is directing a production of the play "Candida" by G.B. Shaw and the show opens on the tenth and trying to get everything ready is taking up all of my free time. If I can I will get the next chapter up sooner but I doubt I will be able to.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

To Lily: Thank you very much, I would high five you right back if I could. Yes I was thinking of you when I named that character. :-)

To Kagehisa: Sorry, but the next chapter will have Sokka in the loo, but it will be short and he will not be taking care of business.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	22. Chapter 22

I'll Walk You Home pt 22

Chapter 8

pt. 4

The Main Course

* * *

Sokka rushed into the men's room, took a quick look to get his bearings, and then went to one of the wash basins along the wall. He told the attendant in the corner,

"Hot water, and lots of it, and a couple of the largest towels you've got."

The tribesman had seen that except for the attendant, he was the only one in the very large room. _Thank Tui for that, at least._

The young warrior stripped down to his waist. When the hot water arrived he grabbed the soap from the edge of the basin, he noticed that it had a seagoing Junk impressed onto it, and although it was scented it didn't stink too badly. He took the proffered hot towel, and using it as a wash cloth, scrubbed his face, neck and ears. Once finished, he rinsed off in the hot water and grabbed his ditty bag, spilling the contents out onto the counter. He fished his razor and strop out of the pile and gave the edge a few quick licks, before lathering up and looking into the mirror.

The fifteen year old was stopped by the dark blue eyes staring out at him from the glass. He had not looked into a mirror since the brief look he had in the darkness of the Captain's cabin aboard the sand ship nearly a week earlier. The young man he now saw in the well lit men's room surprised him. The eyes were sunken and haunted, with dark circles under them. The brown skin drawn tight over the bones of the skull, the ink stain had faded, but the war mask of the ravening wolf was still there, faintly, on the face that stared back at him.

This was not the face of the young boy he had painted all those months ago, when he had prepared to defend his people against a scout ship of the Fire Nation.

The approach of the attendant broke the young warrior's reverie. He began to scrape his face with the sharp steel. He finished quickly, his people did not grow much in the way of facial or body hair, his chest was still bare. _I look like a twelve year old!_ He told himself as he wiped the soap off of his chin. Someday he might be able to grow a small beard, which was a mark of manhood in his tribe, but not for a few years yet.

The attendant was by his side holding a small white bottle, which also had the same junk that the soap had on it, this time painted on the outside of the bottle. _Aftershave_ the swordsman thought, and he shook his head in the negative. He had tried it early in their stay in Ba Sing Se, and although he had to admit he had probably used too much of it, he did not like stinking of it throughout the day. Though, now that he thought about it, he already stank, and not of aftershave.

_Oh well in for a copper in for a gold._ The swordsman thought.

He kicked off his boots and stripped down to his loin cloth, then taking his improvised wash cloth, he gave himself a quick "spit bath" out of the basin. Once he had finished drying himself off, he dumped the contents of his clean clothes bag out on the basin. Not much was there, two pairs of socks, a loin cloth, an old pair of water tribe pants and an old water tribe top. _Oh well…_ he thought as he changed into the clean clothes.

Sokka looked at himself in the mirror and sighed unhappily. He was dressed in traditional water tribe clothes, which was fine in itself, but the outfit, although relatively new, was old in that it was too small for him now. The leggings were dark blue and rather tight, luckily his boots were high enough that they covered the ending of the trousers and also covered the throwing knife holsters on his lower legs. The top was a lighter blue with white trim, but was also just a little too small, he had grown quite a bit since he had first got it, so the opening in the bias over his chest was rather wide, showing a lot of his dark skin and pectoral muscles. Also it was sleeveless with the traditional large arm holes cut low on the sides, which meant that without his arm and stomach wraps, which were safely stowed in his rucksack, even more of his brown skin was revealed, as well as the holsters strapped to his forearms. Well it would just have to do.

He pulled down on the hem of the top, which should have ended below his slim hips, but now, since he had grown so much in the last months, ended only about half way down his butt. He sighed sadly again. He had hoped to make a good impression on the soldier, but now he was going to look like a fool, but at least he would be a clean fool.

The tribesman then pulled out his willow twig and quickly brushed his teeth until they felt smooth against his tongue. The fifteen year old then pulled his hair tie off and brushed his hair out, and drew it back up into its Warrior's Wolf Tail. As he tied it he felt the small piece of leather snap.

"Crap!" The young man said holding the broken tie in his hands.

He had another tie somewhere, but Tui only knew where. _Oh the hell with it!_ He thought. He had already been gone too long. He quickly brushed his hair down on the sides and back. Crammed everything back into the bags, dropped a silver piece in the attendant's bowl and at a fast clip headed back to his companions.

The attendant stood holding another bottle, with the same ship painted on it, watching the young man hurry out of the room.

"Wets!" The older man said aloud, as he began to clean up the men's room.

* * *

Lee and the other waiters were bustling around spreading the dishes of the main course decorously on the table. Sergeant Minh was sitting eyes wide at the sight before her. She was already feeling almost full from all the appetizers she had already eaten, and the pu pu platter was still half full, but now there were five large dishes of steaming food being set out. As well as a large bowl of white rice and small individual bowls of rice for each place setting.

_People don't eat like this,_ she told herself. _Kings eat like this! And this is lunch!_

The temperature in the room had actually risen due to the steam rising from the platters of food.

Lee shooed the rest of the waiters out of the room and put the finishing touches on the table. He was very proud of how everything looked.

The soldier noticed that her blind companion had raised her head, and turned it toward the main room. It took Minh a moment then she heard it. A regular clicking sound. She looked through the bead curtain toward the noise, and saw the young water tribesman striding across the main dining area. The clicking was from his leg brace, each time his left foot hit the floor.

The First Sergeant's heart began to pound in her chest, as she watched the young man stride towards her. _He's just a boy,_ her mature self started to warn her, but ended with an _Oma and Shu!_ The warrior was gorgeous. His dark brown hair was down, framing his handsome face. The dark blue eyes darting around the room as he passed through it were feral and dangerous, as was the wolfish look of the face itself. The head erect atop the long neck, which itself was set off by the ivory choker, then down into the exposed, strong hard chest. The long arms, the ropey muscles moving under taught brown skin. The slim waist and hips above the long solid muscular legs, easily seen in the tight leggings of the tribesman. Minh noticed the leggings, not so tight that the sergeant could tell if the water tribes practiced circumcision, but tight enough to see where the stories of the results of eating raw meat came from.

Common Sense and Maturity were about to comment when they were knocked down by sixteen year old Minhee who elbowed her way to the front to get a better look, and panted in a deep throaty whisper,

_"Oh… I always knew it was true… what they said about princes!"_

The sergeant's eyes were wide and her mouth open as the young man came through the bead curtain and sat down on the other end of the bench.

Toph turned toward her friend as he passed her. She could not see him, but she had forgotten how much she loved the smell of him. All leather, and steel, and fur. No one smelled like Sokka.

"Ladies." The waiter announced with a flourish in his voice. "The main course is served!"

"Delicious!" Minh said in a low breathless voice

"Smells great!" Toph concurred in a similar voice.

"Well let's eat!" Sokka said looking at the table, although he was the only one in the room who was.

Lee bowed and left, humming a popular Earth Kingdom song about wet kisses.

The young man started placing large portions of each dish on his plate. He would then pass them on to his blind companion with a quiet comment on what the platter contained. He also pulled a large number of the appetizers off of the platter in the center of the table. It had been almost a week of dried meat and ship's bread and he was hungry.

The movement snapped the two earthbenders back to the table and they began to dish out food as well. Minh, looking at all the food laid out before her commented,

"Well, I always wanted to eat myself sick."

The fifteen year old warrior opposite to her looked up and gave her a large toothy grin, and held up his right fist across the table towards her. She smiled in response and bumped her own fist against his, then went back to dishing out food onto her plate.

"What's this?" Sokka asked holding up the small cup of red liquid by his place setting.

"It's plum wine." The soldier answered. "I thought you might like some."

"Mmmm." The swordsman said, taking a sip. "It's good… sweet!"

The tribesman looked to his younger companion and noticed that she did not have her own cup. He slid his over to within easy reach for her and said,

"You'll like it, try some."

As the blind earthbender reached for the cup, the sergeant cautioned,

"You're a little young for wine."

"Please…" The younger girl responded. "I've been drinking wine since I was ten. It was part of my etiquette lessons."

"Since you were ten." The older woman observed. "Well if you've been drinking for a whole month then, don't let me stop you."

That got a muffled snort of laughter from the teenager, whose mouth was full of food at the moment.

Toph gave the sergeant a "look", and then sniffed the wine before throwing the nearly full cup down in one gulp.

"A little young for my taste." She pronounced. "I prefer dryer wines, but not bad."

Minh swallowed her third full cup, _or was it her fourth?_ Refilled it and passed the carafe to the tribesman with the offer,

"Help yourself."

Sokka nodded and refilled the cup that Toph had put down between herself and the young man. Sokka took another sip. The sergeant noticed that the carafe was being seriously depleted. She also noticed that the two friends _who were not a couple, "No he's not my boyfriend!"_ had no trouble sharing the same cup.

_"They've probably traded a lot of spit in the months and months they've known each other"_ Minhee groused. "_How come I don't get to spend months and months trading spit with a real live Water Tribe Prince?" _Aloud the First Sergeant said,

"So… The Princess here says you're a prince."

_"Prince…"_ Minhee sighed in the sergeant's mind.

"I'm not a Princess." Toph said with vehemence, while taking another drink of wine from the common cup, just a sip this time.

The young "Prince", who was holding a half eaten skewer of meat in his left hand, and was using the chop sticks in his right hand to shovel fried rice in on top of the meat he was already chewing, gave a muffled snort of disbelief and shook his head no.

"_How elegant." _Maturity commented.

"_How does he breathe?"_ Common sense wondered.

"_I love a man with a good appetite."_ Young Minhee stated, then in a low growl she added, _"It means he has a good appetite for other things as well."_

The First Sergeant wanted to know how he managed to shovel fried rice like that with chop sticks. She noticed that he held them differently than she had been taught.

The young man in question washed the mouthful of food down his gullet with a long drink of tea, and was finally able to respond verbally with,

"I'm not a prince. I'm Southern Tribe; it's the Northern Tribe that has kings and princesses."

The tribesman was quiet after this last, his eyes down looking at the table, while his hand smoothed non-existent wrinkles out of the table cloth.

"But your father is the chief." Toph said. "Doesn't that make you a prince or something?"

The young man turned to his friend and explained,

"My dad's the War Chief, well he's the chief of the war party really, but since we just had the one war party that would make him the War Chief. Now that the war's over we won't need a War Chief anymore."

The Water Tribesman then turned to the soldier to include her in the explanation.

"You see we have a lot of chiefs in the Southern Tribe. We have a Medicine Chief who deals with spirits and the spirit world, a chief hunter which is Bato" This last he directed to the blind girl. "They say if you get two tribers together one of them becomes the chief."

"So your fathers not the chief chief?" The young girl asked.

"No the chief chief is the Tribal Chief which would be Gran Gran."

"Gran Gran?" Asked the soldier.

"My grandmother, Kanna. She's the Big Chief. Everybody goes to her for advice and to settle arguments, and stuff like that, since she is so smart and knows so much. She basically runs the tribe."

"So… won't you become the Big Chief when she dies?" Minh asked.

"Oh no." The young man replied. "It doesn't work that way. You don't inherit jobs like that. You… what…"

Sokka thought for a moment trying to explain how it all worked. Finally he said,

"Well people just act like you're the chief of something. I mean we don't sit around and take a vote, 'everyone who thinks Kanna should be the Big Chief raise your hand' or something. People just start acting like you're the Big Chief, or the Chief Hunter or whatever. You have to earn it. I guess is what I'm trying to say."

The swordsman was quite after this last explanation, staring off into space.

"So is your grandmother a bender?" The soldier asked.

When Minh did not get a reply she looked to the teenager, who was still staring at something over her shoulder. Toph held up her hand and quietly told the older woman,

"His brain is spinning. He does that sometimes, he'll say 'whoa' or 'huh' in a second and he'll have thought of something new. To answer your question his sister is the only Southern Water Bender."

"Whoa!" The tribesman said.

"What?" The blind girl asked, while grinning toward the soldier.

"Gran Gran!" was his reply. "I never thought of it before but she is really something. I mean to me she was just this old woman who told me to pick up my clothes, do my chores, and watch out for my sister. But now that I think about it she really is an amazing woman."

Sokka turned to Toph and in an excited voice explained,

"Gran Gran is Northern Tribe, I didn't know that until we went to the North and met Pakku. You weren't with us then, but the North is a lot different than the South. They have a huge city there, like Omashu or Goaling but when she was my age or just a little older, she left it all on her own, ran the Northern Fire Navy blockade, traveled across the entire world during a war, and ran the Southern Blockade just to get to us. She never told us about any of that. We always thought she was born in the South just like everyone else. That must have taken so much courage to do that all alone."

A somber mood fell on the table after this last; each of them had their own thoughts on the war and courage.

The bravest person the young earthbender knew was sitting across from her taking a sip of wine. He was the one who no matter how often he was beaten down, he would always get up and try again. He was the one who had the courage to be open with her, to tell her how he felt, something she had never been able to do.

Sokka had many heroes in the war and now he had to add Gran Gran to his list. She had joined the top of the list with Yue and Toph. He never thought of himself as very brave, he had done what he had had to do to help his friends and family. That didn't take any courage. He was such a coward that he would freeze up in front of an audience.

The First Sergeant had her own list of courageous men and women who had given everything for their comrades in the war. It was a very long list, too long.

To break the mood Toph suggested to the tribesman,

"Since Bato was away that would make you the chief hunter, so you may not be a prince, but you are still a chief."

The hunter snorted in derision at the suggestion, then told her,

"I was the only hunter, you have to have someone besides yourself to be a chief."

"You were the only hunter?" The sergeant asked.

"Yeah!" The young girl answered for her friend. "When he was my age he had to feed his whole tribe by himself since their only source of food was from hunting and fishing!"

"It's just a small village," The young man explained. "Mostly old people and a few mothers and their young kids. Just a little over a dozen people really, so it sounds a lot more important than it really is."

Toph grunted at this statement. She hated it when her friend ran his accomplishments down like that. She was about to make a comment when the older woman asked,

"If you were the only hunter, what are they doing for food with you gone?"

The tribesman took another sip of wine and refilled the cup as he explained,

"We, my sister and I, left in the fall, that would be spring up here, and I had already laid in my winter caches. It's really hard to hunt in the winter, very little game, no sun, and the weather is really dangerous, storms come up fast and last a long time. So you have to hunt all the time in the spring and summer to get extra food that you store away for the winter. I had already done that, so they would have plenty of food until spring, which is now. Which means I have to get back home soon or their going to be in trouble."

"I thought you said the Northerners had sent a group down to help in the South." The metalbender volunteered. "Wouldn't they take care of the hunting."

"Yeah!" He said brightening a little. "Plus with the war party returning there will be plenty of hunters, some of them benders from the North." Then he snorted in self derision as he added, "They don't need me anymore, I'll just be another mouth to feed at this point."

To illustrate his point the young hunter popped a dumpling from his plate into his mouth, and began to chew it vigorously while giving a little smile to his companions.

Minh understood a little of the feelings of the young hunter. Once you have responsibility for a group of people it is hard to give it up. She remembered when she had been promoted from a squad leader to a platoon sergeant in another company, it had been very hard to leave those troopers, even though she knew the new squad leader was a good man, and would take care of them.

"What about you, sergeant?" Sokka asked the soldier. "What's your story, are you a lifer or just in for the war?"

"You can call me Minh." The First Sergeant answered with a smile. "And yes, I have found a home in the army; I'm a zit lifer all the way."

Sokka raised the full cup of wine, saluting the soldier across from him and toasted,

"To the lifers, Oma and Shu love them, 'cause no one else ever will!"

The trooper laughed, bowed her head to him and raised her own cup, touched his and the two of them drained their cups. The young man refilled his cup and set it down by the young girl, who picked it up, motioned towards the soldier and drank it down in one gulp.

The sergeant watched as the tribesman refilled the cup. She had noticed that he never handed his friend the cup, but always set it down on the table near her. She guessed it was part of the "Don't touch me" rule that seemed to apply to the young girl.

Minh was jealous of the two young people. At first she had been convinced by the girl that there was real animosity between them, but watching them now she saw that they really were a… well maybe not a couple, but at the very least a team. So much was assumed between them, and the looks the young man gave to the girl, showed that he loved her at the very least like a friend, if not more. The First Sergeant could tell that there was tension between them, they had gone through something recently that had effected them, they both looked haggard with sunken eyes and drawn weary faces, but the "friendship" was still there showing through it all. The sergeant wished she had someone in her life that would look at her like that.

"You're not getting off that easy, Minh." The young warrior told the soldier. "Let's have the whole story."

"Not much of a story." The cavalry non-com replied. "I come from a small farming village to the far west, where there were only two single guys who weren't cousins. One of them was five and the other was fifty and I think they only had about ten teeth between them. Well every fall a detachment of troopers would come and collect the government's share of the harvest, which didn't leave us much. But those troopers looked so free on their Ostrich/horses, in their uniforms, and weapons. Well when I was seventeen I joined up and left with them. The first couple of years were pretty tough, but once I got a good C O and a stripe on my sleeve it got a lot better and I've been a trooper ever since."

The young earthbender turned to her friend, and he quietly explained,

"Commanding Officer." Then he turned to the older woman and asked,

"You like soldiering?"

"Yeah! I like soldiering!" The woman answered. "You put up with all the chicken/pig shit so you can do the real soldiering."

"Combat." The swordsman said, it was a statement not a question.

"Not just combat." The sergeant replied. "But yeah that's part of it."

"The best part." The warrior stated.

"Yeah, Well… that's what soldiers do! They fight." The woman agreed.

The two warriors' eyes met across the table.

Sokka saw it in the woman's eyes as he looked into them. She was a fighter, a warrior who had led soldiers in battle. She had won and she had lost. Her decisions had cost her people their lives, and had taken the lives of the enemy. She was a warrior who loved the battle and hated the consequences. He felt humbled. He did not belong in the company of such women, Yue, Toph, Suki, and now Minh. He dropped his eyes down to the table again to hide his shame.

The First Sergeant saw it in the young man's eyes. He had been there, he had led, he had lost and won, he had risked everything for his comrades, he had killed. _So young!_ She thought. "_Not much younger than you were"._ Her mature self told her. A warm feeling of fellowship began to grow in her towards this good man.

Toph could not see what had passed between the two fighters but she could feel it in their voices and in the air of the small room. It was something only they shared, she was not part of it for some reason, and it made her jealous of the older woman, the soldier had something to share with the tribesman that Toph could not.

The blind bender reached out and took up the wine cup. Madame Wang had taught her to only wet her lips when offered wine, never to actually drink it, so that first cup she had downed had landed in her stomach like a fire ball, but it had spread warmth through her tense body, which was an incredible relief after all these days of tension and fear. She had actually been sipping from the cup, not just pretending, throughout the meal. She took a big sip now.

"This food isn't bad." The young girl said, as she held up a piece of chicken/pig with her chop sticks.

The mood broken Sokka picked up his half eaten skewer of meat and agreed,

"Yeah, it's pretty good." He stripped the meat off of the bamboo stick.

"It's delicious." Minh added.

It was the best food the sergeant had ever had.

"It's not as good as Grand Panda's." The blind bender commented, dishing more of the Lo Mein onto her plate.

The young man looked to his friend and smiled.

"Nothing's as good as Grand Panda." He agreed.

"Grand Panda?" The soldier asked.

She was refilling her cup from the carafe. _"Careful!"_ Her Common Sense told her. You've drunk about half of that liter all by yourself. The First Sergeant noted that the glass container was almost empty.

"It's a restaurant we found in the middle ring of Ba Sing Se." The warrior explained, as he reached for the wine cup he was sharing with his young friend.

He had to lean over the table and use all of his long right arm to retrieve the cup. There was a lot of space between Toph and himself.

"It's this great place…" The blind girl said, while the tribesman took a sip of wine.

"It's nice." The young man said, while reaching for the carafe on the other side of the table.

"But not too nice." The young bender added.

"And has the best food…" The swordsman said, while emptying the last of the red liquid into the cup.

"The Kung Pao is amazing…" The blind girl said, motioning for him to pass her the cup.

"As long as you watch out for the 'Pows'" The warrior said, his blue eyes dancing with laughter as he passed the cup to his companion.

"Wimp!" The girl laughed, as she scooped the cup up from the table.

"Fire flakes are one thing, but Grand Panda's 'Pows' are suicide." He told the bender. "And just to let you know I am raising my eyebrow scornfully in your general direction."

Toph almost choked on the wine as she started to laugh at this last.

"You did that on purpose!" She complained through her laughter.

"You bet!" The tribesman answered. "I'm not as good as Mai but I have my moments."

This brought a loud, long cackle from young girl. When she calmed down enough she choked out,

"I still can't believe she got you to pass that string bean out your nose that one time."

The young girl then dissolved into a laughing fit and nearly fell out of her chair. The young man joined in laughing so hard he bent down over the table.

The First Sergeant was feeling very left out, which she suspected was the young bender's object, and shot the girl a nasty look.

_"They are just being friends, remembering good times."_ Maturity advised.

_"Like hell!"_ Minhee commented, folding her arms across her chest, and giving the _little bitch_ a withering look.

Sokka, still laughing, reached over towards his friend and gently scratched on the table for the wine cup. _Careful! _ He told himself. _You don't want to end like that time you discovered sake._ He had taken Suki to the Kyoshi restaurant and had tried the rice wine for the first time. It tasted good and was warm and wonderful in his stomach, but by the time they had gotten to the house he was singing Water Tribe Songs loudly in the street. Suki was _pissed as hell_ and when he got in the house she had not spoken a word. Toph on the other hand and laughed her ass off when she found him. The young man had been miserable the next morning, and Suki still wouldn't talk to him, and Toph was still laughing at him. _Suki, sake, Suki_ suddenly ran through his head and he started laughing again.

As her laughter subsided, the blind bender set the cup down on the table and began to push it towards the young man's outstretched hand. But then she said,

"Oh fuck this! Sokka pick up your plates, and stand up."

The warrior looked to the soldier, shrugged, and did as instructed.

From her chair Toph took a horse stance, and dropped both hands. The earth chairs on either side of her retreated into the floor, she then moved her arms and hands in a pushing motion towards the young man. There was the familiar vibration from the floor then a great rumble as the floor in the center of the room began to rotate clockwise. The young man had to crab walk sideways to stay in place in relation to the walls and archway of the room. The First Sergeant watched as the bench she was on rotated away from the tribesman until the young girl was right beside the young man and Minh was now on the opposite side of the table from the two of them. A change of stance and rising movement of the blind girl's arms and hands raised a stone bench up from the floor under the swordsman who sat down on it. He was laughing so hard he almost fell off of his new seat.

"You are just amazing!" He told his young friend.

"I just wanted to be closer to the wine." Was Toph's response, as she sat down next to her friend. "Besides, now I can do this."

Her left arm shot out and punched him solidly in the arm. The two of them dissolved in laughter.

The sergeant was not amused.

_"An impressive display of finesse and control."_ Common sense commented.

_"I'm sure there was nothing personal meant by that." _Mature advised.

_Oh it is on!"_ Minhee said, folding her arms across her chest.

The First Sergeant agreed with her sixteen year old self.

The young waiter suddenly came through the curtain and asked,

"Is everything all right?"

Sokka, who had finally gotten control of himself looked at the waiter then out through the curtain and noticed that a few of the early supper crowd had arrived and were looking towards the young man and his companions. He pointed this out to the blind bender which sent them both into fits of laughter again.

"Everything is fine." The soldier told the waiter in a tight voice.

"Oh, but could we have some more wine?" The young warrior was just able to get out.

"Yes and another cup, please." The sergeant added.

"We don't need any more cups." Toph amended, smiling toward the older woman. "But could we have two carafes of wine. One for this side of the table and one for her side."

With this last she waved generally towards the cavalry non-com.

"Certainly miss." Lee responded, bowing.

"Oh, and could I get a cushion?" The tribesman asked.

"Make that two!" The First Sergeant ordered.

_"It is so on!"_ Minhee said, putting her hands on her hips.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter up. I hope you have not given up on me and the story. Lots of talking and not much happening. Like Vox Populi observed, only I can have chapter after chapter of three people eating lunch.

This is really irritating but I can't remember who it was that wanted to see Lust knock down Common Sense and Mature Minh. I had Minhee do it since she was the closest character to Lust.

To Lady of the wood: Yes, sorry to say Sokka is my favorite character from the show so I tend to write him a little Mary Sueish. Just wait till the Epilogue you'll probably pull your hair out.

To Blue Eyed Wolf: Thank you so much, I am glad you like the story so far. It will be a little while before there is any fluff, probably a couple of chapters, and sorry no lemons in this story. I have nothing against them, but they just don't seem right for this story, and I would not be comfortable writing one.

The play opened and was very warmly received by the audience. The cast did a very good job and got a lot of well deserved laughs. Thanks to all who asked about it and for your good thoughts. The show closes in three more weekends which should give me a little more time to write.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look. He writes a lot faster than I do, which makes me jealous.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	23. Chapter 23

I'll Walk You Home pt 23

Chapter 8

pt. 5

Dessert

* * *

Sokka stared at the two glass containers of red liquid that were before him and felt discontent. It wasn't fair. The meal had been good, tasty food and plenty of it. He had finished off the appetizers, and had had a portion of all of the dishes. He had even finished most of them. He let out a discontented belch at the thought. He should have stopped eating at least fifteen minutes before he actually had, but it had tasted good. He had not eaten this well for weeks. His stomach was pushing hard against his belt and it actually hurt it was so full.

The conversation had been good for the most part. Then there had been the last part, the embarrassing section where Minh had asked if the two of them knew anything about an incident in the Si Wong that she had received reports about. The way the sergeant explained it the reports came from the Sand Tribes and they were "colorful" to say the least.

The reports told of a beautiful princess that had been abducted by a famous band of brigand sand benders. The survivors claimed that they had captured her while she was making love to her body guard, who was killed when the fair maiden was taken. But the yojimbo's love for his princess was so great, that he rose from his grave, the Sand Tribesmen claimed that they had found the open grave by the side of the ancient road, and since he was a ghost he turned himself invisible, and using magic weapons attacked the brigands, who were just able to escape in abject terror. But the ghost pursued them, and that night attacked them in the form of a dark wolf spirit who, although naked, and without weapons, slew all the benders, using moon beams that he plucked from the air to steal their bending, and rescued the fair princess. At least that was the story the survivors, two men and a woman, who had barely escaped with their lives, told the Sand Tribesmen. Minh also told the two of them that the Sand Tribes had sent scouts in who reported that the girl had been transformed into a beautiful princess dressed in an elegant silk gown of green and gold, and that the Dark Spirit had become a young warrior dressed in blue with a golden sword.

Sokka actually liked the story. He had always like stories of heroes, fair maidens, and spirits. His Gran Gran had told him a lot of them when he was younger. It wasn't until Toph, sitting beside him stiffened and said,

"That bender said he had killed you!"

It was only then that the young warrior thought that the story could be about Toph's abduction by the Captain and his crew. _No that was silly! They had not been making love for one thing, and he obviously wasn't killed._ But Minh started asking embarrassing questions, and Sokka had had to explain what had really happened, which in essence was a long catalog of his screw ups.

How he had misjudged the bender's attack, and been buried and had to dig himself out.

How he had let them escape with the young girl.

How he had to anticipate the crew's route and intercept them, while they held his young friend for a whole day, since he couldn't catch the sand ships.

He could tell the story was upsetting Toph who was sitting beside him. She kept tensing up, and would quietly gasp while he told parts of the story. She must be really pissed at him for screwing up so much.

The soldier kept giving him funny looks too. Like when he explained about being buried alive and having to dig himself out, or how he had crippled the sand ship, or like when he explained about the Captain and his sword.

"You figured that out just by him carrying a sword?" Her eyes were wide when she asked the question.

_She must really think I'm an idiot_ Sokka had thought. It was such an obvious conclusion after all. _I must really look stupid._

The First Sergeant had been especially interested about the fighting naked, and the young warrior had had to explain that he wasn't naked he was wearing his loin cloth after all, and why he had chosen to dye it and his sword, and how he had left his war paint behind and had to improvise his wolf mask. Toph had made a comment at that point,

"That's Meathead for you! You just can't keep clothes on him."

He was glad to hear a little sarcasm in her voice, it was better than the anger he had expected. But it just showed what an inept fighter he was. He had had to sneak up on the crew; he wasn't good enough to meet them in a stand up fight. After all Toph, Katara, and Aang had taken on a battalion of the Earth King's Household Guard in open battle. That was like a hundred to one odds for them. He had had to surprise nine civilians in their camp, almost half of them non-benders, to have a chance of winning. He even explained that he hadn't even intended to fight, just rescue Toph and sneak away.

"Then why did you?" The sergeant had asked him.

"Why did I what?"

"Attack?"

"Well... I saw what they did to…" and he remembered turning to Toph when he explained, "you… and… I just lost it."

"You went berserker." Minh said.

"Yeah… at first, then when I realized I was in a fight, I fell back on a rough plan I had worked out just in case I had to attack them."

"There was something else, one of the scouts of the Sand Tribe saw." The soldier said. "The boy said he saw the princess born again from the sand, and that the Dark Spirit had bathed her like a new born."

_Oh Crap!_ He had thought. S_he would have to bring that up!_

He remembered stealing a look at Toph at that point. The blind girl had turned on the bench putting her back towards him, and he could not see her face. He resisted the urge to stroke her hunched shoulders as he explained to his friend,

"Well, we were covered in blood and stuff, and I didn't want you waking up like that, so I washed it off is all."

"Blood?" The small bender asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah, that first bender…" He began to explain, but was cut off by the sergeant asking,

"The first one you killed? Was that the woman?"

"Killed?" Toph had asked, surprised, she had not realized that he had actually killed some of the slavers.

"Yeah the woman." He had confirmed. "Well there was a lot of blood."

"You cut her head off?" The sergeant had asked.

"Like I said, I had lost it!" He had said, feeling very defensive about his action. "And there was blood everywhere, all over you and all over me. I just couldn't leave you like that."

He remembered he was pleading for understanding from the young girl.

"The next one…" Minh had then asked. "Was the bender that you killed with a 'moon beam', right?"

Sokka remembered being really irritated with the soldier at that point, and turning toward her where she was sitting next to him on his left side. She had slid down the Toph raised bench at some point during the story. What she wanted to know was not important, what was important to the young man, was whether his friend would forgive him. That was all that mattered to the hunter now, and he had let his anger show in his face and voice as he told the sergeant,

"The only other one was the bender with the bandage on his head. I stabbed him through the heart with my sword. Does that answer your question?"

"You killed him too?" Toph's quite voice had asked.

"He killed five all together, all benders." The soldier told the young girl, this was the part of the story Minh appeared to like the most, from the excitement in her voice.

"It was just two!" He had corrected the soldier.

Minh had gone on to explain that the Sand Tribe trackers had found five bodies, all known to be benders.

That had been a shock to the young man. _Crap! Crap! Crap! Toph is never going to want to be near me ever again. She must think I'm some crazed killer!_

Then something happened that surprised the young man more than anything else had in his fifteen odd years of life. The blind girl turned towards him, lifted her face, the tears still running down her cheeks, and in a choked voice told him,

"Sokka I'm so sorry."

Sokka had no idea what she was sorry for. He was the screw up, the warrior who had lost all control and killed five people.

"Toph…" He had to say something but he couldn't think what, at last he just told her, "It's ok, honest it's ok."

He had wanted to take her in his arms, and comfort her, stroke her back, and tell her everything would be fine, but as he reached for her she had turned away again, and he had held himself back.

Minh had continued to ask questions about the fight, she wanted to know all the details. The soldier was eager, yet understanding. It struck him as very odd at the time. She wanted to know what had happened and how he had fought, but the older woman had also wanted to let him know that he didn't have to talk about it if he didn't want to.

The First Sergeant had been particularly interested in the weapons he had used. She wanted to look at the throwing knives and the holsters on his arms. She examined his sword, which he had had to shift to between his legs since there was no room on either side of him, with Toph on his right and Minh on his left. The soldier seemed to be especially fascinated by the pommel on Spring Rain. She traced the pattern of the lotus blossom with her fingers. She even mentioned that there was still ink in the recesses of the casting.

Sokka answered what questions she had. He was not interested in any of it now, no matter how embarrassing it was. All he could think about was what Toph had said. He hoped it had meant that she had finally forgiven him. That was all he really cared about.

At some point in the story Lee must have returned with more wine, and had cleared the table since the Lazy Susan and the empty dishes were gone. This now led the young hunter away from his musings, and back to his original problem. He realized as he stared at the two carafes sitting in front of him that he must have drunk a fair amount of wine during the telling of the story, since both decanters were heavily depleted. He remembered filling the communal cup a number of times, and he remembered filling Minh's cup as well. All three of them had drunk from both carafes which confused the issue staring back at him.

The two clear glass containers were half empty, or were they half full? That was the question after all. It had been bothering him for some minutes now. _Maybe Minh's is half empty, and mine and Toph's is half full._ That was an idea, but he was not sure which was which at this point, and besides as he remembered they had used both pretty indiscriminately during the dinner, _or lunch_ he corrected himself.

Then the solution presented itself to him, and it was so elegant and simple it had to be the correct one. Occam's razor would have no problem with this one. He reached out and took hold of the right hand carafe and very carefully poured its contents into the left hand one. He didn't spill a drop. He set the container down and sighed in contentment. One was now definitely full and the other was definitely empty.

The young warrior watched with a certain amount of trepidation as the young earthbender reached out and took the full carafe and poured some of the wine into their cup. He noticed, not for the first time, that she used her thumb to check the level of the liquid in the cup. She then put the carafe down and picked up the cup to take a drink.

Sokka looked at the now partially empty, partially full clear container of red liquid. He sighed sadly and said,

"That's the story of my life."

"What is?" His blind companion asked after taking her sip.

The young man turned on the bench toward the young girl. He set his right elbow on the high back of the bench and put his left elbow on the table, which was a little awkward since the First Sergeant was still examining the sword which was between his legs, but he wanted to get a better look at his friend as he explained to the blind girl,

"The story of my life is, that as soon as I have worked out all the answers," And he leaned into her for the next part. "You come along and change all the questions."

Toph turned her face towards Sokka's and their noses almost touched. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek, and through her earthbending, since they were both on the earthbent bench, she had an excellent sense of him.

"That's what I'm here for." She told him with a giggle.

Sokka's heart broke. That giggle was the most wonderful sound he had ever heard. She had been so angry, withdrawn, and sad for almost a week now, to hear her laugh, to see her smile, filled the young warrior with unspeakable joy. He loved her laugh, so free, and full of life. He couldn't remember her ever giggling before, but he loved the sound of that too. He loved her eyes, green and smoky. Her fine fair skin, even as it was now, red from the sun. Her round face, which would probably change over the next few years, but he was sure it would only become more beautiful. Her pink lips, especially when they were bent in that evil little grin she had, which he knew that no matter how her face changed that grin would still be on it.

Toph felt the silliness drift away from her. She really had changed all the questions in the young man's life. Now it was no longer "Have you killed?" now, because of her, it was "How many have you killed?"All because she couldn't take care of herself. All because she was a stupid useless little blind girl who had been kidnapped and couldn't even defend herself. Her friend could have been killed, he very nearly was, while she had been no more than a body, an ugly body, _"She hasn't got any fuckin' tits. Just look at 'em!". _She was an _"Ugly little cave troll" _to be stripped, cleaned and sold. And he had seen her like that, naked, tied up, and covered in vomit and piss.

And what had he done? She had not realized just how violent he could be. He had cut them down, cut them to pieces, according to the soldier. Had killed them in cold fury. But then he had freed her, bathed her, and dressed her in elegant silks. So vicious to them and yet so caring with her. No there really was no one in the world like her stupid, oblivious, brilliant, loyal, caring, gentle, friend.

His hand was there, lying on the table in front of her. She could reach out and just touch it, take it in her own. Let him know how much she appreciated him. How much she needed him. How much she loved him. Her hand moved, but then stopped. Fear stopped it. The fear that when she touched him she would feel that same revulsion she had felt when those others had grabbed her, mauled her, pulled and pinched and hurt her. Any touch now made her skin crawl. But maybe there was a way she could tell him what she needed to. A sly, wicked little grin curled her lips.

Sokka was staring at his friend's hair. It was as black as a starless night, and as fine as water running through your hand. It was beautiful, and he loved it, especially the feel of it on his skin. He remembered that morning in the tent when it had brushed against his chest, and his heart began to race. But the bangs just bothered him. He was staring at them now. They covered her beautiful eyes. Those eyes that seemed to always be looking past everything. That seemed to be staring into the future. He had been sitting there for almost a minute using all his will to keep himself from reaching out and pushing those strands of hair off to the side so he could dive into those amazing eyes. He knew the young girl would be freaked out, and so he had stopped himself. That's when Toph punched him in the chest, hard.

"Want a drink?" She asked holding the cup up in her left hand.

The blind bender held it by the bottom using only her finger tips. The Hunter carefully reached out with his left hand and took the offered cup, being careful not to touch his friend's hand.

"Thanks" He said, taking a sip.

Toph smiled to herself as she ran the knuckles of her right hand over her lips. _Wait a second,_ she thought. _That was skin I hit. Is he naked again?_ She sent a subtle wave of bending through the bench. She thought he had clothes on. Her small tongue snuck out between her lips and she tasted her hand. _That was definitely skin she had hit._ She remembered the taste of Sokka's chest, which brought back a flood of memories, which in turn brought a flood of blood up into her face. She unconsciously reached for her sheaf of hair to pull it over her shoulder to cover her blush. Then she realized that it wasn't there. She was wearing her hair up in its bun again. She leaned forward put her elbows on the table covering her face with her hands, trying to look like she was just leaning on her hands.

Minh sat next to the young warrior examining his sword. It was beautiful. She ran her hand up and down the grip. He had to be very rich to afford such a fine weapon. The pommel was in the form of a lotus blossom. She had not mentioned the marks on the Captain and the woman that had been found by the Sand Tribesmen, but she saw now how the swordsman had made them. She had only seen a small section of the blade, not wanting to draw it all the way out of its sheath here in the restaurant but it was beautiful as well.

_"The finest I have ever seen."_ Maturity commented.

_"He must be quite a swordsman to not only carry such a blade but to use it so well."_ Common sense observed.

_"And the flower girls will ride in on little Ostrich/Horse ponies, spreading petals, and the company will be mounted and form an arch with their lances for us to walk through."_ Minhee said from the back of the First Sergeant's mind.

As soon as her sixteen year old self had found out that the hero of "The Princess and the Sand Benders" was sitting across the table from her, at the time he was across the table from the sergeant, Minhee had retreated to the back of the soldier's mind and had begun to plan their wedding.

"For a jian sword this one has an unusually long grip." The sergeant said, as she ran her hand up and down the wire wrapped handle.

Sokka who had just set the cup down by his friend, who in turn was leaning on the table with her back to him, _obviously pissed off at me again_,_ what did I do this time?_ Turned toward the sound of the soldier's voice and almost hit her in the chest with his left elbow. _When did this bench get so crowded?_ He wondered as he swung his arm up over the woman's head and rested it on the high back of the bench behind her.

"That's my master's sword." The young man told the soldier. "He has large hands."

"If you think that's long, you should see Sokka's sword." The blind bender said from her spot on the table.

"It's longer?" The sergeant asked.

"Much!" The young girl answered. "He let me play with it a couple of times."

"It's a shuangshou jian." The swordsman explained. "I like a two handed grip."

"I like it when it's long enough that I can wrap both hands around it with a little something left over." The trooper agreed. "I'd love to see it, can you pull it out?"

"I lost it during the war." The warrior explained.

"Oh No!" The sergeant exclaimed.

"He didn't lose it." The young girl sadly said, as she leaned back on the bench. "He threw it away to save my life."

"As I remember it, I was trying to save my life." The young man said in a light tone. "Saving yours was just a happy accident. And yes I am raising my eyebrow at you, in a sardonic manner."

Toph's right hand shot out and punched the handsome tribesman in the side. Her fist had gone through the large side opening in the water tribe top the young man was wearing. _That was skin again_ she thought, licking her knuckles. _I could have sworn he had clothes on._

As the swordsman turned in reaction to the punch his left arm fell off of the bench and onto the shoulders of the older woman.

"Oh, sorry." He said as he began to raise it back onto the bench.

Minh caught the fit young man's left hand in both of hers and pulled it down over her chest.

"That's ok." She said with a giggle, she went on indicating the knife holsters on his arm."These are really clever. What are these called again?" She asked touching the small metal pieces under the knives.

"Loadstones." The gorgeous swordsman explained. "I found them at the university. They attract steel somehow so I sewed them into the cloth to hold the knives in their scabbards. That way they stay in but are easy to pull out when I need them."

Minh turned to the dark handsome face on her right and licking her lips and smiling said,

"You are so smart, I would never have thought of that."

"No one has ever thought of that." The Blind bender said, in a dry voice, as if to say, _"You aren't clever enough to be considered stupid next to Sokka!"_

The First Sergeant pulled the young man's hand down from over her chest to just above her stomach, ostensibly to examine the arrangement of throwing knives on his forearm. This required her to sit even closer to the fifteen year old. She pushed her hip up against his and her leg alongside his as well. His leg felt strange until she remembered that he was wearing his leg brace on this side, so what she was feeling was heavy leather and steel.

"_Oh this is disgusting!"_ Mature Minh told the First Sergeant. _"Just because he's a teenager you don't have to act like one!"_

But the sergeant ignored her more experienced self and continued taking advice from her sixteen year old self.

_"That's it, now tell him how strong he is, they like that."_ Minhee said, now actively working on bringing the wedding she had planned to fruition.

"Your arms a really… hard." The First Sergeant told the dark skinned teen.

"Oh, sorry." The tribesman said trying to raise his arm. He thought it must be uncomfortable if she was commenting on it.

_"Scars!"_ Minhee nearly screamed, desperately holding on to the swordsman arm. _"He's got scars on his upper arm, I saw them before. They love to talk about their scars."_

Minh lifted the arm over her head and holding onto the young man's upper arm pulled it down onto her chest, rubbing it against her right breast, which even though her tits were small, they were still tits, and she figured even if he didn't care it sure felt good to her. An added benefit was that the young man's hand was now down between her thighs, and she clamped her legs shut to keep it there.

"What are these?" She asked running her fingers up and down the marks on his bicep.

"Training accident." The teenager told her.

"They look like teeth marks." The soldier giggled.

"Yeah ok, so I bit him." The blind bender said, as the blood rushed to her face again.

_Oh enough of this_ The young girl told herself, and she pulled off her head band and began to pull her hair down from its bun. Most of it went down her back but she pulled enough over her shoulder's to help cover her face.

Sokka watched as his friend let her hair fall free, tumbling over her back and shoulders, and he had to restrain himself from reaching out and running his hand through it. It was impossibly long, and black, and looked like it would feel wonderful in your hands.

"Yeah but I disserved it." The tribesman said.

The blind girls arm shot out and punched him in the side again. _That was skin again_ she told herself licking her knuckles. She sent a fine wave of bending out into the bench to get a better feel of her friend.

Minh saw the way the young man was looking at the younger girl and decided to raise her bet. She swung his arm back over her head, turned on the bench and leaning her head back so that it was on his chest, placed her mouth over the marks on the swordsman's arm. She reached out with her right hand to "Steady herself" by placing it on his left thigh, but she hit heavy leather and metal. _It's like trying to feel up a guy in armor._ She told herself. She shifted farther back until she hit his right leg. There she felt firm muscle under her hand. _That's better!_ She thought.

The sergeant opened her mouth wide and placed it over the taught brown skin, then she ran her tongue over the marks on his arm. She took her time, making sure she explored each scar, top and bottom. When she finished, she moved the muscle out of her mouth but held the arm even more firmly onto her chest. She held her position against the young man's bare chest , and looking up at the fifteen year old told him,

"Small mouth, lucky for you she couldn't get much in it. If it had been me, I would have swallowed the whole thing." She finished this with a low breathy laugh.

Sokka had a problem, well he had two problems he just wasn't aware of the second one yet. The problem he was conscious of was… well it was turning into a… well it was becoming… well anyway it was a real problem and was getting… worse, that's it, it was getting worse every second, especially after the very attractive sergeant shifted her hand farther up his leg. It was also starting to become painful, and he would have to do something about it soon, as long as that something did not require him to stand up.

Sokka's second problem was just raising her head.

Toph had sent a wave of bending into the bench and she now had an excellent impression of all the relative positions of everyone on it.

Minh was starting to get a back ache as she was leaning against the teenager's chest. She still held the tribesman's hand between her thighs which was not helping relieve the strain on her back muscles. She pulled the warriors arm down onto her chest to take some of the strain.

_"I told you, you should have worn shorts today!"_ Minhee told the First Sergeant. _"Just think where his hand would be if you had."_

_"If she had worn shorts"_ Common sense responded, _"She would have had to have shaved this morning."_

_Oh Fuck!_ Minh thought. _I haven't shaved my legs or pits in weeks. He's going to think I'm some fury animal. Oh NO! My bush, I haven't trimmed by bush in years!_ Also as she recalled she thought the current style was to shave there too, or worse yet, have the hairs pulled out with wax, which sounded really painful. _Well he's water tribe, maybe they don't shave._ But she really didn't have any faith in that.

Sokka's problem, the one he was aware of, was getting progressively worse, and progressively painful. He had to do something and do it now. He surreptitiously moved his free hand from over the blind bender on his right down to under the table.

Minh finally shifted into a more comfortable position, releasing the teens hand from between her legs, but as she did so her hand shifted again higher on his leg.

_"Oh do it!"_ Minhee shouted. _"It's been forever since I had one in my hand, and I bet his is long, and thick and hard! DO IT!"_

The First Sergeant looked into the handsome young man's eyes, and opening her mouth slightly, let her tongue just show between her teeth as she shifted her hand, and felt something long, and thick, and hard under it.

Sokka gave the attractive woman next to him a very surprised look!

_"Oh I knew it!"_ Minhee squealed. _"It's long, and thick, and hard!"_

_"And it's his hand!"_ Maturity shouted at the sixteen year old version of the sergeant.

The young man looked to the sergeant and wondered to himself, "_Why does she want to hold my hand?"_

All speculation ceased when Toph said in a loud, dark voice,

"I have to pee!"

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well they are almost out of the restaurant. They will be in the next chapter, honest. I am rushing once again to get this up so forgive me for not keeping up on my reading or my replies to reviews.

Everyone tells me not to apologize for being late in updating so I won't, but I will apologize for not apologizing. Now everyone should be happy which will make me happy.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	24. Chapter 24

I'll Walk You Home pt 24

Chapter 8

pt. 6

After Dinner Conversation

* * *

Minh was pissed! _What is with these two?_ She wanted to know. She was following behind the little earthbender as they moved across the dining room on their way to the ladies room. _Talk about timing! She should be a waitress. Not that my mouth was full or anything._

As they entered the lobby the soldier saw that the early dinner crowd had started to arrive. There were three couples and a family of four waiting to be seated. The snooty asshole was checking his seating chart at one end of the ornate room. She was so distracted that she did not notice that the blind bender in front of her had stopped, and the sergeant almost ran into her.

"Why can't you just leave us alone?" The blind girl asked the sergeant.

"What?" The soldier questioned.

"Just leave us alone!" The young girl demanded, her hands clenched into fists, her arms stiff at her side.

Minh put her own hands on her hips as she explained,

"Listen little girl, I'll be more than happy to leave you alone! But he's another story. I don't know what he is to you, a servant or a body guard or what but you don't own him, and he's fair game as far as I'm concerned."

"He's not my servant!"

"No? He's only been kissing your ass ever since I met the two of you!" The soldier shot back, raising her voice.

"He's my… friend!" The girl said.

"Yeah right Princess!" The woman replied scornfully. "That's the Lo Mein, that's the Plum Sauce, here have my cup!"

The sergeant didn't bring up all the looks and sighs the young man had given the girl throughout the meal. She was too pissed, and truth be told too guilty. Even if the young girl didn't like the warrior, he definitely had a thing for her.

"I'm not a Princess!" The young girl shouted.

"Maybe not, but you've got 'High Born Rich Bitch' written all over you!"

"That's better than whatever you've got all over you. I may be blind, but I'm sure it's big, and clear, and ends in 'BITCH'!" The blind bender shouted back, her fists now held ready by her sides.

Minh's voice became low and dangerous, her fists shifting to in front of her as well as she asked,

"Are you calling me a whore?"

This last earned a gasp from a young woman standing nearby. The sergeant gave the young woman a quick once over. Eighteen/nineteen, tits big enough to feed a small orphanage, stuffed into a too small, too expensive outfit, and hanging on the arm of a forty/fifty year old overdressed merchant.

"I'm blind, so I don't know, you tell me!" was the young girl's heated reply.

The cavalry trooper turned to the overstuffed tart and commented.

"Oh, like you've never heard that word before!"

"Really!" The companion to the top heavy woman said in an offended tone. "This town has really gone downhill since the army moved in."

"Yeah! It was so much better here before we drove those nice fire benders out!" The soldier knew that no one made money during a war by being patriotic.

"Come dear" The older man told the boobalishious furniture on his arm. "Obviously this restaurant is no longer fit for our patronage."

"I can see that without any of your firebending friends around it must be way beneath you now!" The sergeant shot back, as the couple headed for the door.

Minh saw that the merchant and his pet were not the only ones leaving. She was not the only one to notice. The Maitre d' saw all his business heading for the door. He had to do something fast or the restaurant would suffer which meant that he would suffer, which was not something he was looking forward to. Taking what courage he had, which wasn't much, and all of his greed, which was quite considerable, he approached the two women and suggested,

"Perhaps you ladies could find a more suitable place for this discussion."

"I'm no High Born Lady." The sergeant replied, then turning to the young girl in front of her went on, "I'm a soldier. I work for a living. I don't treat my friends like slaves, or servants, or seeing eye koala/dogs. I don't call my friends demeaning names! I let my friends touch me! I tell my friends how much I like and respect them. I treat my friends like friends!"

"It looked like you were the one doing all the touching." The young girl threw back.

"That's because he's out of practice!" The soldier returned. "Being stuck with some high born little girl that he's not allowed to put his hands on without permission!"

"Ladies please!" Dingxian begged.

"Fuck off!" The blind girl said.

"Fuck off asshole!" The soldier amplified at the prissy man, who rapidly retreated to his podium.

Minh knew this was a terrible idea. She should just shut up and walk away. This was going to end very badly for her. She might lose a stripe, maybe all of them, but right now she did not care. The soldier had finally met a nice guy, a real hero, who came from someplace where there were no High Borns, were everyone was the same. Even the son of a great chief was just a man. A man who treated her like a woman, not just a piece of meat put there for his pleasure. Yes he was young, just a teenager and she was too old for him, but he was different, special. This could be her only chance to be loved by a man she could love, that she could respect, and that would respect her. But this little Princess was going to stop her. Minh had seen the way the young warrior had looked at the girl. She had seen the way he treated her, and the soldier knew she herself really didn't have a chance. But she had also seen how the aristocratic bitch had treated him, and she hated her for it.

No, the trooper was done with these high born assholes ruining everything for her. These aristocrats that couldn't be touched without permission. Oh it was ok for you to suck their cocks when they wanted you to. And they could fuck you anytime they wanted. And they could pass you around as a party favor to their "noble" friends. _"'Noble' that's a joke. _The sergeant told herself. _Yeah their real noble, especially when there are three of them on you at the same time with ten more cheering and waiting for their turn._ No, this was one High Born Noble that was going to be told just what a useless piece of shit she was, no matter what the cost to the sergeant.

"Well maybe he's just not interested in what you're selling!" The young girl spat at the soldier.

"That's because he's been stuck with some useless little blind girl tagging along all the time, treating him like a piece of shit."

"I do not, he's my…"

"What?" The soldier cut the girl off. "Your servant? Your play toy? Someone who has to ask permission before he can even let his peasant hands touch you."

"It's not like that!"

"Oh you nobles are all alike. You treat everyone like shit, and expect us to thank you for the privilege of kissing your ass!"

"He's my friend!" The blind girl shouted with a fierceness that told Minh she was hitting her mark.

"Your friend? You don't even like him!" The soldier told the girl. "You've been saying that all afternoon. He doesn't want you! He doesn't need you! He needs someone like me. A woman not a little girl who's frightened of everyone and everything. He needs someone who he can grab hold of and hang onto. Someone who will like him, maybe even love him, not some High Born, selfish, stupid little cunt who… "

Toph was on her before Minh could finish. The sergeant had not expected the attack, but she suddenly found herself on her back, the young girl's strong hands on her throat, choking the breath out her. The girl's face was contorted into a snarl, and the scream coming from the blind girl was more animal than human. _She's really trying to kill me!_ The First Sergeant realized. Then the soldier's training kicked in.

The trooper clasped her hands at her waist _"A Hand shake not a lovers hand clasp"_ The old instructor's voice ran through her head, as she drove her arms up through the young girls arms, rotating up out, down and back up then around again, breaking the strangle hold and putting her opponents arms into a double elbow lock. _"You can now either break the elbows or at the very least dislocate them"_ The voice droned on, but the old instructor had never had to fight a wild saber toothed wolf/tiger which was what Minh was now holding.

The girl was on top of the trooper kicking and kneeing for all she was worth. Then the blind girl felt the soldier's right hand brush her cheek, turning her head the twelve year old clamped her teeth down on the fleshy part of the sergeant's hand around the thumb.

Minh felt the pain shoot through her arm. The small girl wasn't just biting the soldier's hand, she had locked her teeth down and was now pulling and shaking her head to inflict as much damage as possible. The sergeant tried to increase the pressure on the girl's elbows but it wasn't having any effect. The woman would have broken the girl's arms if she could have, but she was held fast by the young girl's teeth and couldn't apply sufficient pressure. If she was going to save her thumb the sergeant had to do something now.

Releasing her hold on the girl's right arm, Minh freed her own left hand, and punched the little earthbender as hard as she could in the face. It was her weaker hand and the angle was terrible for a good punch, and with the girl moving her head the entire time, the soldier was only able to land a glancing blow. The trooper struck again and again, landing four or five punches. The girl's free hand was grabbing for the soldier's face, while she was trying to land the awkward blows. _She's trying to blind me!_ The woman realized. Finally the trooper landed a solid punch on the girl freeing both of them. The sergeant then got a foot between herself and the girl and was finally able to kick the small bender to the far side of the room.

Rolling up on her shoulders Minh used a scissors kick to get her feet under her, and stood up in a low stance facing the blind bender, who was on her hands and toes, on the other side of the lobby, looking like a wildcat ready to spring. The soldier saw blood on the girl's mouth. Minh's blood!

"I'll kill you!" the blind girl was screaming at the sergeant. "LITTLE CUNT! I'LL KILL YOU!"

The blind girl rocked back onto her feet and slapped both hands on the stone floor.

* * *

Sokka sat in the side room and wondered about women. He had always thought he understood women but he was confused by Minh and Toph. There seemed to be some tension between the two of them that didn't make any sense to the young warrior. _The two of them should get along really well_, the young man thought. After all they were both attractive women, both fighters, both earthbenders, they had a lot in common. There was nothing the tribesman could think of that would come between them and cause conflict.

Now that he thought about it, it was just like Suki and Ty Lee back in Ba Sing Se. You would think that the two of them would be great friends, but they always seemed to be butting heads. It was funny even Mai seemed to get on Suki's wrong side right before the dour young woman left with Zuko. No it didn't make any sense to the young man.

Take Minh for example, a good, professional, hard headed soldier, but during lunch she kept acting more and more like… well Ty Lee actually, finally wanting to hold his hand. Yes, he really understood women, it was just a few that were confusing, and the universe enjoyed sending those few to him. Well tonight would be a full moon, he would have a long talk with Yue about it. She was always the one who could help him make sense of everything.

The young man looked out over the main room. He was getting more and more worried. The girls had not been gone that long, but he was starting to hear shouting coming from the lobby. Not to take any chances, he pulled boomerang from his pile of weapons and slipped it into the back of his belt on his right side, where he could easily grab it if he needed to. He also got his club out and loosened Spring Rain in its scabbard.

When he heard Toph scream he drew his sword and ran for the lobby shouting,

"TOPH!"

He leapt over the first table he came to, taking the most direct route to the archway leading into the lobby, his club in his left hand, and his shining steel blade in his right. He had almost reached the arch when the wall exploded outward sending him sprawling across the main room.

* * *

Minh first felt, then saw the floor on her left and right rise up like two giant hands to crush her. The sergeant clapped her own hands over her head and driving them down and out shattered the stone trap, sending the debris into the wooden walls on either side of the lobby, which shattered with the force.

"Typical Tournament Fighter, all flash no meat!" The sergeant taunted, as she prepared her own assault.

_"Remember small, fast, and hard"_ The instructor's words rang in her head as she kicked up two small stones from the debris on the floor. She punched them both at the small bender across the room, but they were immediately intercepted by a spire of rock rising up out of the floor at an angle in front of the soldier.

The trooper only had enough time to blunt the end of the spire before it struck her in the chest and sent her flying backwards into the front doors of the restaurant. She crashed through the doors backwards and in a cloud of splintered wood and glass landed hard in the road. "_Tuck and roll!"_ She did so, using the impetus of the blow to throw her back up onto her feet facing the restaurant. She dug her toes into the paving stones of the street.

_That little high born cunt is really trying to kill me_ The sergeant thought. That spire had been needle sharp, and if her own missiles had not smashed the end as well as using her own bending to blunt it, the rock column would have gone right through her.

Minh's hand was bleeding, and every beat of her heart sent a throb of pain from her hand up into her arm. Her chest ached from being hit by the spire, and her back was bruised and bloody from going through the door. But it was only pain, and she pushed it down. She was a soldier, pain was her business, receiving it and inflicting it. That's what she did for a living. Up till now she had been on the receiving end, but she was determined to start inflicting it from now on. She was going to teach that _little bitch_ the difference between fighting in a tournament and fighting in a war. This was to the death.

* * *

Sokka crawled out from under the wreckage and rubble of the wall that had hit him. He had just got to his feet when he felt the whole restaurant begin to shake.

* * *

Minh watched the front of the restaurant collapse as a two story tall wave of earth, stone, and debris came roaring at her, the small earthbender riding on the crest. The sergeant shot a heavy stone column up out of the road surface angled into the center of the wave tearing it apart, sending the blind girl flying.

* * *

Toph, her feet knocked out from under her, landed hard on the road. She felt two of the large paving stones coming straight for her, from where she lay sprawled on the road she threw up a barrier to the attack. As she rose to her feet, she could feel the stones impact harmlessly against the buttress. _"Little cunt!" _The words screamed in her head. She felt the rough hands tearing at her clothes, tearing at her. But this time she wasn't helpless. This time she would kill them all. The small earthbender sent the heavy stone wall at the older woman.

"CUNT!" The blind girl screamed.

* * *

Sokka scrambled over the wreckage of the restaurant. His eyes and nose choked with dirt and dust. He still had his weapons. He guided on the sounds of the bending battle taking place out in the street. He didn't know what was happening, he only knew that Toph needed him and he had to get to her.

* * *

Minh saw the stone wall coming at her, sliding with incredible speed along the surface of the road. She pulled her arms up and in, spun on her heels, sinking down into the road itself, and felt the buttress pass harmlessly over head. Using her bending the trooper changed her angle in the earth and created an opening to the surface. She would use an earth column to shoot her out of the ground at an unexpected place, pulling up two heavy paving stones as she went. It was a technique she had developed during the war. The enemy never knew where you would be coming from and would be taken by surprise. She had used it against a firebender, a really good one, and _had killed his sorry ass!_

The sergeant erupted out of the ground pulling up two heavy stones with her bending, it saved her life. As she emerged a stone heading straight towards her, struck the two she was bending, so instead of being struck by a solid stone she was hit by the rubble of all three, most of the momentum of the first dissipated in the collision with her own. It still sent her tumbling down the road. She rolled up onto her feet to see two more stones coming at her. She pulled up a quick barrier to block the attack, but the heavy stones smashed straight through it barely missing her, but pelting her with debris.

Minh suddenly realized that she was at a great disadvantage to the young tournament fighter up the road from her. The soldier had been trained and spent the last decade fighting fire benders. All her blocks were designed to stop and deflect fire blasts not heavy earthbending attacks. She would have to change the training for the company now that peace had come. Her troopers would have to be able to fight earthbenders not firebenders.

The First Sergeant punched the remnants of her buttress at the little girl, who didn't even deign to block them, she only batted them aside with her hands and kicked up another stone and shot it at the soldier.

The trooper pulled up another, much heavier barrier, with a much more acute angle to deflect the attack. She felt first one, then a second stone bounce off of the triangular buttress but a third smashed through, coming in at a higher angle, as if the blind girl had been able to change the missile's direction while in flight, so that it struck dead on to the right hand wall. The sergeant was able to dodge the stone, but only just barely. She punched remnants of the defensive structure at the young girl.

_That stone came right for me!_ The sergeant realized. _But she couldn't have seen me, I was behind a wall,_ then it occurred to the older woman, _she's blind she can't see anything._ That's when Minh finally understood who she was fighting. _She's not some blind little girl earthbender, she's the blind little girl earthbender, not someone named Toph, but The Toph!_ The trooper had never thought famous heroes of the war would be coming to a small town in the middle of nowhere, especially on their own two feet. _Oh Fuck!_

* * *

Sokka finally managed to get up and over the wreckage of Hong Fat's and out onto the wreckage of the main road. Wiping the dirt out of his eyes on the back of his hands, he took in the battle that was in progress between Toph and Minh.

"Toph! Stop! What's going on?" The young man shouted.

* * *

_Sokka! He came for me! He's here!_ Toph felt for her friend but everything to her left was jumbled and hard to sense. So much of it was rubble mixed in with broken wooden walls and furniture it was worse than trying to sense him standing on sand. _"Don't worry about your boyfriend, 'cause I just killed him!"_

"Sokka get back!" The blind girl shouted. "They're trying to kill you! GET BACK!"

* * *

"First Sergeant where do you want us?"

At the shout Minh looked down the road and saw corporal Tam and his seven troopers coming up the road at the gallop, in a column of twos. _First squad, third platoon, third platoon has the duty today, First squad, good troops, Tam good squad leader._

"Stay out of this!" The sergeant ordered.

_They're good but they won't stand a chance against this psycho bitch!_

The corporal pulled his troop to a halt just short of The Company First Sergeant. He wanted to help but orders were orders, then Tam saw the young tribesman standing on a pile of rubble by the side of the road.

"Right Sarge!" The squad leader shouted. "The wet's ours!"

* * *

_They're going to kill him!_ _Not if I kill them first!_

"SOKKA RUN!" The metalbender screamed.

Toph reached out with her bending and fused five of the paving stones together. _First the little cunt! Cunt! CUNT! Then the rest of them!_ She kicked the fused stone up into the air and punched out with both hands, sending the massive stone flying towards the older woman, who had tried to take her friend from her. _Crush Suki, then the rest!_

* * *

"NO!" Minh shouted.

Then she saw the massive fused stone coming at her. She bent two stone pillars, one behind the other, out of the road. She hoped they would be heavy enough to stop the attack. _No time!_ She thought.

"DON''T KILL THEM!" The soldier shouted, hoping that Sokka heard her.

* * *

"You got it Sarge!" The corporal acknowledged. "Wong, Hu, you heard the First Sergeant, bust him up but don't kill him!"

The first two troopers at the head of the column smiled to each other. This would be fun. They leveled their lances at the tribesman and spurred their mounts into the gallop.

* * *

Sokka had heard Minh. _Crap!_ He thought that would make it a lot tougher. As he saw the troopers riding down onto him, he tossed both his sword and his club into the air. He grabbed his sword out of the air with his left hand, swinging it around to a reverse grip, the blade extending back parallel to his forearm, pommel forward. The club he caught in his right hand.

The young warrior's mind raced as the lancers bore down on him. _Confined space, bad for cavalry, "bust him up" no stabbing, use their lances as clubs not spears, one will go high, one low, their best chance, watch their eyes, and hope they're new at this._ He saw a look pass between the troopers, then he decided the one on his right would go low, that one was looking at his leg, the one on his left was looking at the tribesman's head, that one would go high. Sokka had his plan.

* * *

The ice cat was out there searching for her, but Toph wasn't helpless now, now she could fight back. Pulling her fists back she punched them out again, fingers spread. The block broke into more than fifty missiles shooting right for the First Sergeant.

* * *

Minh heard the hail of stones smash into her earth pillars _Oma let them hold!_ The soldier prayed.

* * *

Sokka stood sideways, left side forward, between the charging ostrich/horses. As he had predicted, the lancer on his right swung for his legs, he caught that spear with his sword. The lance from his left, came down towards his head, he caught that one on his club. The young swordsman then dodged to his right pushing the lower lance with his sword and pulling the upper one hooked on the hammer stone of his club. Both troopers tried to hang onto their weapons, which was their undoing.

As they galloped past the blue eyed fighter, the upper lance clothes lined the trooper on the right, pulling him out of his saddle and over the rump of his mount. Using the fulcrum of the right hand ostrich/horse's chest, Sokka dug the butt end of the lower lance into the side of the left hand rider, pushing him out of and off to the side of his mount.

The tribesman ran to the trooper who had gone arse over teakettle, since he was the closest. As the cavalry man tried to rise, the young man gave him a sharp rap on the helmet with his club. The lancers eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed onto the road.

By the time the water tribe warrior got to him, the second trooper had had time to stand and draw his sword. The cavalryman attacked with a straight forward over hand cut, which Sokka parried with his club, then the young swordsman drove the pommel of his left hand weapon up into the lancers chin. The trooper went down like a sack of wet clothes.

Sokka turned, looked at the corporal, and raised his club in salute. The swordsman then readied himself for the next attack.

* * *

_"Remember your basics!"_ The instructor's voice rang through the First Sergeant's mind. "_The reason they're basics is because they work!"_ Once the barrage had ended the soldier stepped out from behind her cover and started kicking small stones from the rubble and punched them at the blind bender up the road.

_"Small, fast and hard! Accuracy over size. You can punch the biggest rock in the world but if it doesn't hit anything, you might as well have left it in the ground! Set up a rhythm!"_

"One, two, three" The sergeant began to quietly chant to herself, as she punched the small rocks at the girl.

_"Set up a rhythm!"_

"One, two, three"

_"If you attack in a rhythm, your enemy will pick up on that rhythm!"_

Minh could see that the young girl had not even pulled up a defensive barrier against the troopers attack. She was disdainfully swatting the stones out of the air with her hands.

"One, two, three." The trooper chanted.

_"Then once you have imposed your rhythm on the enemy, break it!"_

"One, two, three… FOUR!"

* * *

_Suki's not much of a bender!_ Toph told herself, as the young girl used her bending to bat the feeble little stones away. She sent her bending out to see if Sokka had gotten away. No the idiot was still over by the pile of rubble. She had better kill those other sand benders who were trying to kill him, then she could finish _"The Snow Cat"._

Something hit Toph hard in her lower abdomen. It spun her half way around and sent her sprawling onto the road. The small bender immediately pulled a buttress out of the ground to protect her, as she got back onto her feet.

The young girl was livid! She had never been hit before. She was going to crush that _stupid cunt!_

* * *

"Fucking wet!" The corporal swore.

He turned to the next two troopers in line and ordered,

"Lee, Song, Go back, go around the block, find a way through, street, alley, fucking dismount and kick in doors if you have to but find a way in behind that fucking wet!"

"On it!" Lee, the first trooper said.

Turning his mount, Lee locked eyes with the cavalrywoman behind him. She turned her own mount and they both spurred their ostrich/horses down the road.

Tam turned to the rest of his squad,

"You! reverse your lances, no more fancy shit, go in line abreast, stirrup to stirrup, hit him with your butt caps, ride him down. I'll give you support."

He was met with a chorus of,

"You got it corp!" "On it!" "My pleasure!"

The troopers knew their corporal, any other leader who offered to "give them support" from the rear would be met with disdain, but Tam was a bender who fought best dismounted.

Tam jumped down off of his mount. He wished he could bend better from the saddle the way the First Sergeant could. Then he could go in with the charge. He still remembered the top kick's demonstration of how you could earthbend while mounted. She was something else! _The First Sergeant!_ The corporal thought.

The corporal pulled the head of his mount towards him, and looking into the eye of the ostrich/horse (the cavalryman knew that 'Orses" had terrible vision to their front) so for the mount to see him, Tam stood to the side, that way at least one eye could focus on him.

"Mu Mu" The squad leader told his mount. "The First Sergeant, go to the First Sergeant."

Tam pointed out onto the road, where the top kick was fighting the small bender.

Mu Mu squawked in reply, lowered her head and galloped towards Minh.

"Prepare to charge!" The corporal shouted, kicking up a stone from the rubble around him. "Ride that blue eyed son of bitch down!"

The three cavalrymen lined up abreast, filling the narrow area between the buildings and the fight of the two benders in the road. The heavy brass butt caps of their spears pointed at the water tribesman.

* * *

"Got you, you bitch!" Minh crowed. "How's that for ass kissing?"

She ran towards the barrier pulled up by the injured girl. Now to finish her off before she could recover. _Stupid cow blinded herself with her own defense!_ The sergeant told herself, right before the hard surface of the road suddenly gave way and swallowed the woman as she ran. _Idiot! she sees with her bending not her eyes!_

The First Sergeant felt the earth around her solidify and begin to crush her. She sent out her bending holding the ground back, but she didn't have the power to stop it, only slow it. _Shit she's got power!_ The trooper would not be able to hold this back for long.

Minh pushed with all her bending but it was a losing battle. She had managed to get her shoulders and chest up out of the trap, but the small bender was too powerful. The sergeant would be crushed before she could escape completely. _I'm going to die here!_ She realized, when she felt something grab the collar of her robe.

She looked up to see an ostrich/horse had clamped its beak on her robe and was pulling her out of the ground. _Wounded Trooper Drill_ ran through the sergeant's mind as she felt her self being lifted up off the ground. She recognized the mare, it was corporal Tam's mount. Minh grabbed the reins and vaulted up into the saddle.

"Good girl." The top kick crooned as she patted the orse's neck. "Lets go and kick some ass!"

With this last she spurred the mount in the flanks and steered her down the road.

* * *

Toph had that cunt now. She could feel the earth closing on her opponent, then suddenly Suki was gone. Toph couldn't feel the woman anywhere in the area, only an ostrich/horse running away from the metalbender. In frustration she shattered her own protective barrier and sent the debris flying in all directions.

The exertion caused a white hot shaft of pain to lance up from her stomach where she had been hit. The pain distracted her, she did not notice the ostrich/horse change direction and begin to gallop towards her.

* * *

Sokka watched as the charge assembled. Two of the troopers had ridden of, to get help, or to get behind him, he wasn't sure which, but that was for later. He saw the corporal send his mount out towards the bending battle to the tribesman's right. The three mounted troopers had reversed their lances, that meant they planned to punch him with the blunt butt caps, which would be a much better use of the weapons, and much harder to defend against. It also meant that the cavalrymen had to choke up on their spears, to avoid stabbing themselves with the sharp points. That gave the young man the opening he would need.

The young warrior watched the corporal begin his bombardment and the troopers begin their charge. It was well coordinated. The bender was punching the stones up at a high angle to go over the moving lancers, and land on top of the tribesman. That meant that Sokka had time, before he had to move. At the last instant, instead of retreating and offering his back to his attackers the hunter charged toward the lancers.

Sokka dove under the spears, deflecting them up with his sword. He rolled onto his side towards the legs of the middle ostrich/horse. The animal only saw a dark object moving towards its legs, and reacted instinctively, jumping over what ever it was that was trying to trip it.

The tribesman ran the edge of his blade down the chest of the cavalry mount and along its stomach as the beast vaulted over him. The swordsman was careful to only exert enough pressure to cut through the breast strap and the girth of the saddle. He did not want to injure the animal, just dismount the rider.

The two outside riders had been pushing their mounts in towards the center in order to maintain the tight formation of the charge. When the center animal jumped up the two outside animals moved in to fill the space. When the center ostrich/horse came down he landed on top of the outer two, causing them to veer off. The orse and rider on Sokka's left crashed through the remnants of the front lobby of Hong Fat's, dismounting the rider, who landed very heavily and did not immediately get up. The animal stopped and looked rather confused as it stood tamely in the ruined restaurant.

The center rider, who had been detached from his mount landed, saddle and all, on top of the rider to Sokka's right. Both riders went down in a jumble of arms, legs, and leather. Neither seemed to be in too big of a hurry to get up again.

The young warrior faced the corporal and threw his club, spinning, up into the air.

* * *

Minh spurred the mare towards the young girl up the road from her. The First Sergeant had ridden every mount in the company. She had to know not only her troopers but their mounts as well, if she was going to really lead her company.

_Moo Moo!_ She remembered finally. _Or something like that_ she told her self.

"Ok Moo Moo we've done this before." She told the corporal's mount.

The sergeant would much rather of had her own mount under her but Mu Mu would have to do.

The woman swung her right leg over the low horn at the front of the saddle, and rode along sideways for a second, as she set her self for "Kick Bending Drill". Then with both hands on the horn she swung her legs out, and forward, feet together, she hit the ground, kick bending up a heavy paving stone ahead and to the opposite side. Using the momentum of the running orse she let it swing her legs back and around, over the rump of the animal, pulling her own chest up onto the seat of the saddle, then swinging her legs forward she delivered a double kick to the stone she had just raised.

It was a difficult maneuver that required perfect aim and timing, but Minh was an expert at it, and the stone flew right for the young girl. The First Sergeant dropped her feet to the ground and reversed the maneuver. She was able to send three heavy stones down range before she swung up into the saddle again, in order to turn her mount and head down the road for a second run in.

"Good girl!" She told the ostrich/horse, while patting its neck.

Mu Mu squawked in reply, the mare had always liked the First Sergeant, and was happy that she had made the woman happy.

* * *

Toph felt bending in front of her, but she could only sense the ostrich/horse, not the bender. The young girl finally realized that the bender was on the animal and was attacking. She was just able to dodge and block the stones coming at her. She was having a hard time feeling where they were.

The blind bender reached out into the rubble of the street around her. She would take out the mount and its rider and then she would cut that Snow Cat to pieces, just as Sokka had done to the sand benders.

* * *

Tam's eyes followed the spinning club as it rose in the air. He couldn't help himself. The eye naturally followed shiny spinning things. The corporal was only distracted for a second but it was all the time Sokka needed.

The cavalryman did not see the hunter pull boomerang from behind his back and send it spinning in a low arc into the air.

The male bender pulled his eyes and mind back to the wet standing arrogantly in front of him. The young warrior was standing there with his head tilted slightly to the side, as he nonchalantly snatched his falling club out of the air. Then the blue eyed boy raised an eyebrow at the corporal, daring him.

Tam kicked up a large chunk of rubble, and was about to send it right at that grinning face when something hit him in the back of his head, sending him sprawling face first into the ground. The corporal thought that he heard a nasty crunch, right before he lost consciousness.

* * *

Minh was just turning Mu Mu to start another attack when she felt the ostrich/horse pulled sideways out from under her. The sergeant landed hard on the road. Looking up she saw what had happened, but her mind would not accept it. _You can't do that!_ She told her self. It was an earth whip that had knocked the legs out from under her mount. The animal was picking herself up off to the side apparently unhurt. A second whip was descending onto the woman as she lay on the road.

The trooper rolled to the side dodging the attack. _You can't make earthwhips. No Bender has that skill or control!_ Unlike water, fire, or even sand; earth was not one thing of one size. An earth whip would have to be a collection of different rocks of different sizes and shapes and weights. No Earthbender ever born could keep such a conglomeration of material together and coordinate it into a weapon. But apparently there was one earthbender who could. Who could control not only one but two of them and use them as lethal weapons. And Minh was facing her.

* * *

Sokka stuck his club under his left arm and caught boomerang. He put the weapon back in his belt behind his back. Then, taking his club into his right hand he looked around for the two missing troopers. It took a moment then he saw the two cavalrymen riding down the road from the far end. They had found a way through the block of buildings.

As he had looked around he saw that faces were beginning to appear in the windows of the buildings lining the street. Civilians were watching the battle taking place outside their doors.

He heard the distinctive sound of the chink of harness in the distance and looking down to the other end of the street saw a new troop of cavalry approaching.

_This is getting bad really fast. _He thought. _If Toph starts throwing buildings around,_ something he knew she was more than capable of doing, _ people are going to get hurt._

The young warrior looked for his friend and what he saw was _very not good!_

_

* * *

_

Toph had her now. She had the snow cat. She was no longer the helpless naked little girl. Now Toph was stalking her. Now Toph was the one on her element, no longer on snow and ice, but on solid earth that answered to the bender's command.

* * *

Minh had thrown up barriers and pillars but none were strong enough to stop the blind girl. The sergeant was diving for a crater created by the battle in the road when she felt the whip wrap around her waist. She was smashed down onto the hard stones of the road, knocking the wind out of her. _So this is it._ She thought._ Fight in a war for more then ten years, and I'm going to be killed by some psycho earthbender._

Minh felt the whip tighten and begin to lift her again. _This will be it_. She thought. Then suddenly she was released and falling the short distance to the ground. Something had saved her.

* * *

Sokka ran out between the two benders. He had to stop this before Toph killed the woman.

"Toph stop!" he shouted.

He swung his club down onto and through the earthwhip, breaking the flow of chi and disrupting the bending that held the long line of stones together. The whip collapsed.

The second whip sliced through the air striking the young man in his left leg sending him sprawling across the ground.

* * *

_What was Meathead doing?_ _She had to kill her, and he was stopping her!_

_

* * *

_

"Toph stop!" The young man shouted, struggling to his feet.

The leg brace had taken the brunt of the attack, but it was now jammed and he couldn't move his leg, it was stuck in a slightly bent position. Finally, after dropping his weapons, he was able to get his feet under him, and he began to limp towards his blind friend.

"Toph you're going to kill her, you have to stop!"

"No!" The young earthbender shouted back. "I can't stop! I have to kill her, I have to kill all of them. They want to hurts us! They all want to hurt us!"

"If you have to kill someone" Sokka shouted to her. "Then kill me! I'm the one who couldn't protect you. I'm the one who let them take you, and hurt you. If anyone deserves to die it's me. Kill me Toph!"

Toph dropped the earthwhips and felt her friend approaching, he was limping just as he had after the last battle on the day of Sozin's comet, when she and Suki had had to hold him up until he got his crutch.

"Sokka you don't understand!" The young girl told him. "She wants to hurt us."

"No she doesn't Toph." As he got closer the tribesman was able to speak in normal tones. "And even if she did I wouldn't let her. I will never let anyone hurt you."

"But they said they had killed you. They said you would never come for me. That I was all alone, that I would be alone forever. I was so scared, Sokka. You were gone. Suki said you would be gone forever, that you didn't want to save me, that you didn't care. I was so scared she was right. That you didn't care what happened to me."

The swordsman didn't understand about Suki but he knew that that was not important. The only thing that mattered was that his friend knew,

"Toph I will always be there for you. If I go away for any reason, I will always come back to you. I'm your own personal boomerang, I will always return."

Sokka was standing in front of the twelve year old bender now. He held out his arms to her.

"I was so scared." The girl said, in a quiet voice. "I was so scared. So alone"

"I know" The boy replied.

"You were gone" She told him, tears glistening in her eyes.

"I will always return to you."

"Always?"

"Toph you are part of my life, you will be part of my life for all eternity. No matter what happens, no matter where we go, or how we change. I will always need you to be a part of me. I will always return to you."

The young girl shifted on her feet, taking a small step forward towards the open arms of the young man before her. In the end she was unable to take that last half step. Finally she said,

"Thanks"

Then she punched him in the chest. It must have really hurt because she could hear the tears in his voice as he told her,

"Anytime."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Sorry, no wait, no I'm not, well yes I am, well I'm conflicted. Hey I finally got them out of the restaurant, or at least I destroyed the restaurant.

I would dearly love some feed back on this chapter (and no I am not just fishing for reviews even though they are my drug of choice and I am very addicted). This is the biggest fight I have ever tried to write and I would really like to know if it worked. Or what parts worked and what parts didn't and why.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

To those reviewers that I should have replied to in my last notes sorry but here you go.

To HaveBlue: Thank you very much yes the story could use a lot of polish but right now I am just trying to get it finished which seems like a very long way from here at the moment.

To Dox: Thank you very much.

To Saxsui: I want to thank you and my parents and especially my wife who lets me spend hours writing fan fiction.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	25. Chapter 25

I'll Walk You Home pt 25

Chapter 8

pt. 7

Brainbending

* * *

All the troopers in the company compound looked up as the prisoners were brought in through the gate. Rumors had run throughout the camp. Stories of a huge bending fight between the First Sergeant and a little girl, that had destroyed the center of the town. How a young wet had taken on first squad and kicked their asses. Some even hinted darkly that the wet was the new Black Lotus who wandered the world killing any bender that offended him. A few said he only killed earthbenders but most thought that he killed any bender that was arrogant towards him, the element didn't matter, it was the attitude of the bender that was important. One or two hinted that it was the girl that mattered.

"Stay away from the girl if you want to live." They would say. "Just look at the girl wrong and we'll find you in the morning with a Black Lotus on your forehead."

The procession through the main gate didn't quell any of the rumors, it actually added a few. The column was led by Corporal Tam whose nose was bent out of shape, literally, and he had dried blood down his face and tunic. The rest of first squad didn't look much better. They all were covered in dirt, bumps, and bruises. Trooper Rong was riding bare back, his saddle tied to the back of trooper Song's.

The prisoners didn't look very prisonery either. They were walking at the rear of the column with Sergeant Minh. Neither one was bound in any way. The boy was carrying enough weapons that it looked like he could take on the whole company. The First Sergeant and the girl both looked like they had had a very rough time of it. Both were covered in dirt and bruises. The right side of the young bender's face was one large swollen red blotch that was just starting to turn blue, and her right eye was rapidly swelling shut. The boy didn't look too bad except for the limp, but all three of them were limping.

Trooper Nuo looked up and watched the tribesman walk by.

"Talk about well armed." She said to her fellow soldier.

Private Rou leaned on her broom and commented.

"There is something to be said for Water Tribe fashions."

"Nobody told you two to stop working!" Sergeant Hualing said, standing behind the two troopers.

"Right sarge!" Nuo said picking up her shovel and bucket.

The two privates went back to policing the area, but they both noticed that the sergeant was humming a popular song, as she now watched the young warrior cross the quadrangle in front of the company Head Quarters.

* * *

First Sergeant Minh limped along beside the tribesman. The young bender was on his other side. She knew it was only a matter of time before she would feel her stripes being ripped off her sleeve. Thirteen years down the drain. Well if she could avoid a general court she could stay in and start the long hard climb over again. All because of that little rich bitch going crazy on her. Well to be honest Minh had gone a little crazy herself. This was really going to suck.

"So what's this OOD like?" The young man asked her, in a quiet voice.

The question pulled her out of her reverie. She thought a moment and answered,

"First Lieutenant Ho, company XO, mustang, good officer, but get's all the crap details from the CO."

"Age?" The swordsman asked.

"Thirties."

"Wife? Kids?"

"None." The sergeant suddenly had the feeling that she was in an intelligence debriefing, with the sharp direct nature of the questions being fired at her by the young swordsman.

"Tough, but fair?"

"Yeah."

"Has heard it all."

"Pretty much"

"Smart?"

"Pretty smart?"

"But held back, since he's such a good XO."

"Yeah. How'd you know?" The trooper asked.

"Typical." Was all the young warrior offered. "Where are the rest of the officers?"

"They're all ring knockers, most are at the Battalion HQ, jockeying for promotion. The CO is at Regimental doing the same." The soldier answered.

"The Dai Li, how much does the army know? Heroes or traitors?"

"Ah Fuck!" Toph said, from the other side of the young man in blue.

"Toph it's our best bet!" The swordsman said placatingly to the blind girl.

He then turned to the First Sergeant looking for the answer to his question.

"Aaaa, Dai Li, traitors, sold out Ba Sing Se to Azula." The woman answered.

"Any stories or rumors about mindbending?" The tribesman then asked.

"Some, nothing too specific, just they had a way of…"

"OK!" The swordsman cut her off.

"So what's the plan?" The blind girl asked, sounding defeated.

"Ok, so we use the old Mindbending routine." The young man told the two girls.

"Minh, you're the 'Straight'. You just tell the truth, don't embellish, don't try to hide anything, be straight with him. Just remember that you and Toph were going to the Ladies Room, having a casual conversation, you said something and she suddenly went bug fuck on you. After that you were just defending yourself. You got that?"

"Well that's kinda what happened." The sergeant replied. "But…"

She was cut off by the blue eyed boy holding up his hand to silence her.

"Great!, I'm 'The Friend' and Toph you're 'The Jet'."

"I'm always The Jet" The young girl complained. "Why can't you be The Jet?"

"My Jet is nowhere as good as your Jet, Toph!" The young man explained. "Your Jet is just friggin' awesome, besides who would care if I got mindbended. I'm nowhere near as destructive as you are. You're totally amazing when it comes to destruction. You're not called the Blind Bandit for nothing, after all."

This seemed to mollify the small bender, and she finally acquiesced with a,

"OK… But next time I get to be The Friend and you get to be The Jet."

"Ok." The tribesman replied, then as an afterthought he added. "Oh yeah, you can hang on my pack, instead of my belt, and I won't play it touchy feely like I usually do."

"Thanks!" Toph said, with a note of relief in her voice, she then punched him in the arm.

"Minh." The swordsman said turning to the soldier. "Remember just play it straight, oh he's probably going to start off screaming and yelling and pounding his desk. Just let him, no matter what he says or does let him vent, don't try to explain or answer unless he asks you a direct question. Once he's run down, and you've told him what happened, let me do all the talking."

"What are you two going to do?" The sergeant asked with trepidation apparent in her voice.

"We're going to give First Lieutenant Ho an excuse to let us off, and give him a chance to screw his CO."

They had reached the door to the Company HQ. Sokka motioned the First Sergeant to take the lead, then asked,

"Ready?"

Toph took a step back and using both hands grabbed hold of the young man's rucksack and answered,

"Ready!"

"It's show time." The tribesman said rubbing his hands together, then he nodded to Minh to open the door.

* * *

First Lieutenant Ho looked up from the mountain of scrolls and papers trying to bury him, in response to the knock on his door.

"Come." He said in a gruff voice.

The door opened and corporal Jang, the company clerk stood in the door way, informing the XO,

"First Sergeant Minh and the prisoners are here sir."

"Alright, show the First Sergeant in and have the prisoners wait." The officer ordered.

* * *

Sokka watched and Toph felt the older woman go through the door. The clerk closed the door behind her and went back to his desk. The Company office was a medium sized room with four desks and a number of doors leading off to individual offices. The walls and floor were compacted earth typical of most buildings in the kingdom. The clerk was the only other person in the room beside the two travelers. It was getting late and everyone else had already left for the day.

"Ok if we sit down?" The young man asked the clerk, indicating a bench along the wall of the office the First Sergeant had just entered.

The clerk shrugged, and taking that as an affirmative the tribesman pulled off his rucksack and the rest of his gear and sat down. The young earthbender sat down next to him on the bench.

Sokka began to divest himself of all his weapons. He tied them onto his back pack in a haphazard fashion, he wanted to look as innocuous as possible when they saw the officer. Toph sat with her feet on the floor, and leaned back on the bench with her back and hands flat against the common wall.

"Lot of shouting." She whispered to her friend as he worked.

Sokka could hear some of it without the aid of earthbending. Lieutenant Ho was loud. _Must be all his years as a sergeant._ The tribesman thought.

"The mayor has been here." Toph whispered.

"City council too." She went on. "All of them… public works… the watch… Hong Fat… the restaurant association…"

Toph sat and stewed as she whispered any pertinent information to her friend. She was pissed, her face ached, her jaw hurt when she moved it to speak. And her stomach hurt with every breath she took.

The small bender was very embarrassed that the stupidwhorebitchcunt had actually landed an earthbent blow. She had fought against the best and no one not even Aang had been able to actually hit with earthbending, but that stupidwhorebitchcunt had. And she was not even that good an earthbender. Even the boulder, who was totally over rated, was a better bender than the stupidwhorebitchcunt was.

Then there had been the whole admission to Sokka that she had been frightened. The blind girl knew she would never be able to live that down. She wished that Meathead had just let her earthbend the hell out of everything and the two of them could have just taken off for the hills, but nooooo he didn't want to be hunted by the earth army. So here they were and she was going to have to play The Jet again.

Toph was really pissed off by the whole conversation between Sokka and the stupidwhorebitchcunt. They had used all this military jargon with "Mustached Officers" and "ex-ohs", and other stupid words she didn't know. It was like the stupidwhorebitchcunt had something that made her closer to the young man then she herself had, and she didn't like that at all. She felt left out and jealous of the older woman. Well she would show that stupidwhorebitchcunt. She was going to give Sokka the best Jet he had ever seen.

"The stupidwhorebitchcunt is talking now." The blind girl told her friend.

"Toooph…" The young man whispered back in warning. "Remember we're in this together."

"Ok… " She replied. "Talking about why she didn't report right away… repairing the road with Broken Nose… how we met… going to the restaurant… about finding out you… killed those sand benders."

"Crap!" The young man whispered, cutting her off. "I hadn't thought about that."

"Is that going to change everything?" The young girl asked. "We can still run for it."

"No… that's ok." The tribesman said thoughtfully. "Yeah… I can use it. Yeah, I can spin that into the brainbending. No that can be good."

"We're on." The blind girl said.

The door opened a moment later and the First Sergeant stepped out and said,

"Lieutenant Ho will see you now."

Sokka and Toph stood up. The young man slung his pack, bag, and water skin onto his shoulders, the young girl threw her own bindle over her back and hanging on to her companion's rucksack with both hands the two walked past the soldier into the office. Minh followed and closed the door.

* * *

The office was fairly small with just the desk and two chairs in it. The First Sergeant stood to the side near the wall. The two prisoners stood in front of the desk, but also slightly off to the side. The Lieutenant was looking down at his papers and let everyone stand silently while he finished, and signed the paper before him.

The Company Executive Officer looked up, his face a model of authority, mixed with sternness, tempered by fairness. Minh had seen it many times in the course of her duties. She was fascinated to see it suddenly change as the officer's eyes scanned the two prisoners before him. Authority was replaced with surprise, mixed with concern, tempered by paternal compassion.

Lieutenant Ho stood up, came around his desk, approached the sergeant and quietly asked,

"Are these really the accused? They're just kids."

The older woman looked over to the two young people for the first time since entering the office and had to stop herself from looking for Sokka and Toph, to see if they were hiding somewhere. The tall, handsome, heavily armed, young killer with the cold blue eyes that assed everyone and everything around him had been replaced by a boy of medium height, moderate build, his hair back up in its pony tail, he was unarmed, his throwing knife holsters were gone, with a strange collection of weapons haphazardly hanging off of an overstuffed back pack. His arms covered his muscular chest, as his hands clung to the opposite straps of his rucksack, almost as if he were hugging himself for a little comfort. She couldn't even see the eyes, since they were down cast and nervously examining the floor, a look of embarrassment and near terror on the face that contained them.

The arrogant high born girl had been replaced by a timid little blind child, desperately clinging onto the boy, and hiding behind him. Occasionally a hand would escape its frantic hold on the knapsack and would sweep the area around her to try and determine where she was, but then the searching hand would fly back to its death grip on the boy.

"Yes sir." The sergeant finally replied. "Sorry sir I should have been more explicit in my description of the two, earlier."

The older woman felt the blood rush to her face as she remembered how she had thought about, and had touched the boy in front of her. He was just a child.

"Sokka?" The two soldiers were both surprised by the small, quiet cry from the little girl. It sound for all the world like a kitten calling for its mother.

"Don't let them take me to the little room." The small helpless blind girl went on, in the same desperate voice.

"Don't worry Toph." The boy answered with big brother bravado. "They'll have to go through me before they take you anywhere."

"Boy." Lieutenant Ho said, and all the bravado disappeared from the boy at the sound. "No one will be taking anyone anywhere. Don't worry."

"Oh, thank you sir." The boy said with genuine gratitude in his voice.

"But I have to ask you some questions." The officer went on. "Now my sergeant here..."

The XO indicated Minh with his hand. The boy cringed and the girl hid her face in the back pack and whimpered quietly. The lieutenant shot a stern look at the First Sergeant, then turned back to the two children and asked in a concerned voice,

"…says that you… well that you two were involved in an incident in the Si Wong desert?"

The boy suddenly looked very guilty and with down cast eyes answered,

"Yes major, I'm afraid we were."

"It's lieutenant, Lieutenant Ho." The officer corrected him.

"Oh shoot!" The boy said, clearly upset with himself. "The sergeant said that, I'm really sorry I got it wrong."

"That's ok, no problem." Ho assured him. "But about the incident in the desert. Sergeant Minh told me that you… well… that you killed five earthbenders. Is that true?"

The boy looked terribly guilty and ashamed and he had difficulty in replying,

"Yes."

"Oh Sokka…" Came a small desperate cry from the girl.

"But Toph didn't have a choice." The words rushed out of the boy.

"I didn't?" The girl asked.

"No Toph it was really our only chance. You had to use the trigger." The boy explained.

"Oh right, yes I had to." The girl confirmed. "Will you ever forgive me?"

The soldiers could hear the tears in the little girl's voice.

"Toph you had no choice." The boy comforted her.

He reached out to hug her, but held himself back at the last. He turned to the two veterans and drawing on his reserves of courage told them,

"The sand benders ambushed us, and Toph really had no choice."

"They were going to kill you." The girl explained from behind the boy, her voice begging for forgiveness.

"She had to use the trigger. Once it was all over she used the disarm phrase and we ran away."

"Trigger?" The lieutenant asked.

The officer looked to his sergeant for an explanation, but only received a shrug and a shake of the head in reply.

"I thought you knew." The boy answered, guilt had now returned to his manner and voice. "I thought everyone in the army knew."

"Right before the fall of Ba Sing Se," The boy began. "We were captured by the…"

The boy stopped, looked at his friend then nervously mouthed the words "Dai Li".

"Dai Li?" The lieutenant asked aloud.

"WHERE? WHERE?" The little girl screamed. "NOT THE LITTLE ROOM!"

The boy cringed at the scream. The small blind girl became frantic and using her fingers and toes climbed up on the boy's back pack. He was in danger of being pulled over backwards, and he reached out desperately for support. Ho jumped forward and grabbed the boy's arms to keep him upright.

The girl climbed to the top of the pack. One hand holding the boy's pony tail for balance, the other grabbed the club hanging from the pack. She began to swing the club in an arc around her, but since it was still tied to the pack the only one in danger of being struck was the boy.

"Ow,ow,ow! Not the hair!" The boy squeaked.

"NOT THE LITTLE ROOM!" The girl shouted, pulling even harder on the pony tail.

"Ow!, Oww!. Toph it's ok! They're not here. You're safe!"

"You're perfectly safe here!" Lieutenant Ho affirmed. "We're not going to hurt you. We'll protect you! We're the army not the..."

Ho was stopped by the terrified look on the boy's face.

"You know who!" The officer finished.

"Really? The girl asked, brandishing the club in front of the boy's face, and nearly hitting him with it in the process.

"Really!" First Lieutenant Ho answered. "You have the full protection of Badger/Mole Company, First Battalion, Four Hundred and Forty Second Calvary. You are safe with us little lady."

The executive officer said this with pride in his company, and finished with compassion and paternal care for the young girl.

Toph seemed to settle down, after that. She dropped the club, which landed on the boy's shoulder.

"Ow."

This freed both hands to be able to hold on to the boy's pony tail.

"Ow!"

She leaned down and quietly asked the boy,

"Does he look nice? He sounds nice."

"Yes Toph, he's looks nice. I trust him."

The blind girl settled on her knees onto the top of the back pack, still holding the boy's hair. She no longer seemed frightened, and even had a little smile on her face.

"Why don't you come down off of there?" Ho Suggested.

"Well if it's safe." The girl responded, a little dubiously.

Toph climbed down off of the boy's pack, but she still kept one hand on the rucksack, but now instead of hiding behind the boy out of fear, she seemed to be hiding from the officer out of shyness, dragging one toe across the floor.

Ho released the boy's hands once the small girl was back on the ground.

"She's a cute little thing, isn't she?" The officer asked the sergeant. "Oh, at ease sergeant."

"Yes sir. Thank you sir." The sergeant replied, spreading her feet and placing her hands behind her back.

"So, she's blind." Ho asked.

"Yes sir." Minh answered.

"So, son." The older man asked the boy. "What happened in the desert, and what's this about a trigger?"

"Well while we were captured The you know who would take each of us to a you know where every day." The boy picked up on his story. "We could never remember what had happened there. Then when the city was betrayed by the you know who..."

At this the XO passed a dark look to his sergeant.

"We were able to escape, thanks to Toph's earthbending, with the king and the Avatar."

"You know the Avatar?" The lieutenant asked.

"Well my sister is his waterbending teacher, and Toph here is his earthbending teacher." The boy explained.

"Really!" The officer replied, obviously impressed.

"We never knew what the you know who wanted from us until after the war. The White Lotus, after they liberated the city, found records and they told us that the you know who planed to use us to assassinate the Avatar and the King."

"How?"

"Apparently they used Mindbending to somehow bend our brains."

At this the officer turned to his sergeant, and nodding and pointing seemed to be saying _"You see the rumors were true!"_

"When we hear a special trigger phrase we go crazy and attack whoever is near us. That's what happened in the desert."

"I'm so sorry Sokka." The little girl told her friend. "I had no choice."

"I know Toph." He comforted her.

"So she said the trigger phrase, and you killed all the sand benders." The officer said in realization.

"Exactly, she had no choice they were going to kill us. Once we were safe she said the release phrase and I came back to myself. We don't remember anything that happens when we are in the crazy state. We don't even know our own trigger and release phrases. As soon as we hear them we forget them. So I know Toph's phrases."

"And I know Sokka's." The little girl volunteered.

"That's horrible!" The officer observed. "To do that to children. Those bastards!"

"Yes sir!" The sergeant agreed with vehemence.

"Oh stand easy sergeant." Ho told the woman.

"Thank you sir." Minh replied, leaning against the wall.

The officer leaned back against the front of his desk as he asked,

"So that's what happened this afternoon? The sergeant must have accidentally said little Toph's..."

With this he gave a little finger wave to the young girl, who did not respond until the boy said,

"The nice officer is waving at you Toph."

Then the girl hid her face shyly in the knapsack and waved back.

"...trigger phrase, and she was 'activated'." Ho finished.

"Well, I was thinking about that." The boy said. "It might not have been anything the sergeant said. It could have been anyone in the restaurant. It doesn't matter who says it as long as we hear it. And that restaurant had a definite Fire Nation feel to it."

"What do you mean?" The XO asked.

"Well all the wooden walls and furniture just screamed Fire Nation."

"Really?" The officer inquired.

"Oh yeah." The boy affirmed. "During the war Toph and I snuck into the Fire Nation a couple of times to see what we could find out."

"You infiltrated the enemy's country and gathered intelligence?" The lieutenant asked, admiration was evident in his manner and voice.

"Well I don't know about that, we just snuck in and found out what we could." The boy said matter of factly. "Anyway we noticed that most of the buildings are made of wood there."

"Really? I didn't know that." The older man admitted. "I would think that would be dangerous for them, all the fire and all."

"That's what I thought at first but after a couple of earthquakes I figured it out." The boy explained. "Fire is not a problem for them. They control it, they can put it out as easily as they can create it. But they live on volcanos and have earthquakes almost everyday. Wood buildings are light and flexible and just shake in an earthquake. Stone is heavy and rigid and breaks and collapses in an earthquake."

"The big palaces and government buildings are built of stone but even there most of the insides are wood. A lot like Hong Fat's."

"He figured that out all by himself." The little girl said with obvious pride in her friend.

"Very clever." The officer complimented the boy. "Sergeant, why did you pick Hong Fat's?"

Minh pushed off of the wall and came to attention, but before she could answer the boy volunteered,

"Well she didn't pick it, she just suggested it. She told us she wanted to check out some rumors she had heard."

"Rumors?" The XO asked.

Minh was lost for a second but the boy piped up again,

"She said there were rumors about meetings during the occupation between Fire Army officers and local people at that restaurant and she wanted to see inside it."

"Is that true sergeant?" The lieutenant asked.

"Yes sir, I had heard that Hong Fat's was sort of an unofficial headquarters for the Fire Army during the occupation. That Officers and collaborators would often meet there, and I just wanted to have a look around. I have to say I did see some suspicious types in there."

"Stand easy Minh." Ho told her. "Good work. That would explain what happened this afternoon. A Fire Army agent could have triggered the incident."

"You think it was deliberate?" The boy asked. "I thought it was just an accident, but if it was deliberate that would explain a lot."

"It certainly would." The lieutenant said thoughtfully.

"I would have released Toph sooner." The boy said apologetically. "But I was attacked by those soldiers."

"I gave Corporal Tam strict orders to stay out of the action sir." The sergeant said, coming to attention again.

Ho waved her to relax, as he said,

"Yes I got your preliminary report through sergeant Tao. Yes I am going to have to have a talk with private Tam tomorrow. And I'll want you to be there First Sergeant."

"Yes sir." Minh replied.

"Tell me Minh." The officer went on. "Did you know that Hong Fat's was the CO's favorite restaurant?"

"Oh no sir." The sergeant was off the wall and back to attention again. "If I had know the Captain frequented that restaurant I would never have dreamed of going there. You know how the CO feels about anything that has even the hint of enlisted personnel."

"That's what I thought. Well we're going to have to check out this restaurant and those rumors more thoroughly."

The XO stood up then.

"Good job Minh." Ho told the sergeant. "Well it's pretty late, why don't you set up our honored guests in the VIP BOQ and we can see them on their way in the morning."

Then he turned to young people and asked,

"Unless you need some time to recover from your ordeals? We would love to have you as our guests for as long as you want to stay."

"Oh, thank you very much." The boy said. "But we should probably be on our way. Toph is trying to get home in Gaoling to see her parents. They haven't seen her since before the war ended, and they must be getting concerned."

"Oh?" Ho asked. "You have family in Gaoling? What's their name, I'm originally from Gaoling, perhaps my family knows yours."

Toph seemed reluctant to answer so Sokka volunteered,

"Her parents are Lao and Poppy Be Fong."

The officers expression changed completely and he asked,

"You're Grand Duke Lao's daughter?"

Toph sighed in defeat and answered,

"Yes."

"Well, well, well." The XO said in surprise. "We don't get exalted personages such as yourself here. Please, if there is anything you need let me know. The resources of Badger/Mole company are at your disposal."

"Thanks." The little girl said, she seemed to be embarrassed by her new status.

"First Sergeant show her highness and her companion to our VIP quarters please."

"Yes sir." The trooper crisply replied.

She showed the two young people out of the office, but before she left the officer stopped her and quietly told her,

"Good job today Minh. This could have been a real disaster for all of us but your quick thinking saved the day."

"Thank you sir, just doing my duty, sir." The First Sergeant answered.

First Lieutenant Ho watched the sergeant with an entirely new perspective, both of a professional and of a personal nature, as she left the office.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hey I'm on time, yay me!

Just wanted to thank everyone for all their kind words on the last chapter I am really glad you liked it and the response just knocked me over thanks very much.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

x

To Sifu Toph: Thanks so much. I'm glad the characters seem true to the originals.

Yeah I have to admit I like Tokka fluff too, just hope I do an ok job with it.

Thanks I try hard on the fights.

x

To Nana: Sorry about Minh but she is important to our heroes. Thanks for the review.

x

To Rose: Thank you... Thank you...Thank you!

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	26. Chapter 26

I'll Walk You Home pt 26

Chapter 8

pt. 8

Moonlit Conversations

* * *

"You are beautiful tonight." Sokka told her. "Well, you are beautiful every night. You were always and will always be beautiful. It's just so nice to get out of the city and really be able to see you and spend some time with you. I've missed you so much."

The young hunter was sitting in a stone garden, leaning on a large stone, looking up into the night sky, behind the VIP Quarters. The garden was to be looked at, not sat in, but the tribesman had never been very good at using things for what others thought they should be used for. The VIP Quarters was a three bedroom house with two baths, where you could actually take a bath, a front living room, a dining room, and a full kitchen with an attached wash room in the back.

"Now that the war's over I hope things are better for you. I hope La isn't a jerk or anything, though you've had lots of experience with jerks." The teen said with a deprecating laugh. "You don't need any more."

"Things have been a little crazy here." He told his lost love. "Toph has had a really bad time recently, so any help you can give her would be really great. Not that you have any reason to do me any favors."

The young man stood up then and began to pace around the stones in the garden.

"Can you ever forgive me? I caused you nothing but pain, turning your life into nothing but turmoil until I failed you completely and you…"

Tears came to the hunter's eyes then, and his words choked in his throat. Finally he continued,

"I'm so sorry, so very sorry. I tried to do the right thing. I always try to do the right thing, but it always turns out wrong. I ruined your life. I've ruined Suki's. And Now I've ruined Toph's. What is wrong with me? Why am I such a useless, horrible piece of shit?"

"Sorry, self pity, not something you are familiar with." He told her.

After a moment he gained control of himself and he said,

"Wanted to thank you again for all the help out on the desert. I couldn't have done it without you." Then he chuckled as he went on, "Oh did you hear Minh about the moonbeams. That's pretty rich isn't it? Throwing moonbeams and killing benders, as if someone as kind and giving as you could hurt anyone."

"Yeah, I killed people, five of them apparently, that makes a total of six counting Combustion Man." The tribesman sat down again with a sad sigh. "That means I'm going to have to have six Enemy Ways when I get home. How am I supposed to afford that? I'll be hunting for a year just to pay the shaman and to feed the guests. Maybe I could get a special two for one deal or something, like a bulk discount, since there will be so many."

"How did those old heroes in the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation stories afford it?" He asked more to himself than his princess. "I mean that Earth Kingdom story of the Blind King of the South who wiped out an entire army by himself. That would be thousands of Enemy Ways. How could one guy, even if he were a king afford that?"

"Well anyway it will be a while before I can get home and start on that. Have to raise the Southern Fleet first, then the Fire Army air fleet salvage operation, then after that…"

"Yeah… Suki…" The young man said thoughtfully. "What am I going to do about Suki? I didn't mean to hurt her. That's my problem I never mean to hurt anyone, but that's all I ever seem to do. Anyway, I… Well… I hurt her. I chose Toph over Suki. That's not quite true either. I didn't even make a choice, I didn't even think about it. When Toph said she was leaving, I just knew I had to go with her. I couldn't just leave Toph all alone."

"So what do I say to Suki?" The warrior asked. "I have to see her. I have to explain to her. I still love her it's just… What?"

He used his Wang Fire councilor's voice as he said,

"Well Suki, I love you, but since I have already ruined your life there's nothing much left for me in this relationship, besides I've fallen in love with a twelve year old girl who can't stand me, and who is probably terrified of me, or if I'm really lucky, she just hates me now, since I have ruined her life as well, and have turned her into a crazed killer. Oh by the way, I'm a crazed killer too, so it's probably all for the best that we break up."

"Yeah!" Sokka went on in his own voice. "That pretty much covers the situation."

The warrior leaned back and stared at the moon for a time. The moon made no reply, it simply rode on the clouds like a ship on a dark sea, beautiful but so very far away. Finally the young man said,

"You were… are so beautiful. Yes I'm shallow, but the first time I saw you, you were so beautiful. Even in my dreams I had never seen anyone as beautiful as you were, on your barge moving down the canal. You were like the first sunrise after the long winter night. I couldn't believe that anyone could be that beautiful. I thought I shouldn't look at her, being seen by someone like me must hurt her. You were so beautiful and elegant. And it was all effortless on your part, you simply were."

"And I spoke to you. If I had had any sense I would never have had the courage to try and talk to you. But you answered, and you were smart, and clever, and kind, and most of all you were fun. I couldn't believe that someone like you could be so fun to be with. You enjoyed so much of everything. You filled my heart. I had never had so much joy and fun in my life, those few short hours we spent together."

"This is going to sound crazy." The tribesman snorted. "But Toph reminds me of you. She is beautiful, and she can be elegant, when she wants to be. I still remember that party we crashed. But most of all it is her sense of fun that reminds me of you. The best times of my life have been having fun with the two of you."

"Toph laughed today." The hunter said. "It was so good to hear her laugh again. You would have loved her laugh."

The young man stared up into the sky for some time after that. The clear light of the moon reflected in his dark blue eyes.

"Thanks Yue." Sokka finally said. "I really miss talking with you."

* * *

Toph was getting ready for bed. Sokka had taken all her clothes to wash them so they would be ready in the morning, and he had gotten a simple tunic, draw string pants, and a short robe from the _Stupidwhorebi… ok so she wasn't that bad._ The sergeant had even apologized for her part in the argument and the fight that day. Minh had even apologized for _attacking and mauling_ Sokka. The First Sergeant had blamed it on the wine, but Toph thought she was just a _soggy pants whore_ who acted that way towards all _gorgeous, heroic, brilliant, courageous, nice, stupid, idiotic, oblivious, idiotic, stupid idiots who didn't even get it when a woman was crawling all over him, and he just thought she was being nice, and not trying to steal him from the girl he was with, even though he wasn't that girl's boyfriend or anything, as a matter of fact that girl didn't even like him that much, and besides he already had a girlfriend, who he didn't like as much as he liked Toph, who was the girl he was with…_

The blind girl, who had been pulling the tunic over her head at that point suddenly stopped. _Wait a minute_ She thought. _What was that last?_ She asked herself. She wasn't sure when he had said it, but she thought she remembered Sokka saying those exact words. _Well maybe not those exact words but something pretty close_. _No, that was just crazy_. She told herself.

The young bender finished dressing, and put the damp cloth Meathead had given her back on her face. He was right it definitely felt better. Stupid had commented,

"I wish there was some snow here. If you wrap a towel around snow it is really good for reducing swelling and pain."

And if anyone knew anything about swelling and pain it was Sokka. The _stupidwhore_… Oh ok, Minh had commented on the fact that Sokka was the only one to come out of the fight without a scratch, at least until Toph had smashed him with her earth whip. Yet the blind girl said he was always losing and getting beaten up in his training sessions. The young girl smiled, which hurt, as she remembered explaining that the young man was normally fighting the Avatar, and his teachers, so a bunch of soldiers and sand benders was not much of a challenge for him.

Toph took another sip of the tea her friend had made for her. It was tepid now and still very bitter. He had grated some willow bark and had steeped it in the tea, telling her it would help with the pain and swelling as well. The blind bender had to admit it was helping, the throbbing in her face was down to a dull ache, and her side only hurt whenever she breathed, or moved, or stood still.

_How does he put up with this? _The girl asked herself. Toph had never actually been injured in any of her fights, well not this badly at least, but her friend was always getting hurt, usually worse than this, and he always came back the next day and started over again.

The blind bender finished the tea and wrapped the robe around herself. Even with the tunic, pants and robe on she was feeling rather naked, without her breast bindings or loin cloth on. She felt like everything was just flapping in the breeze as it were, even though she was fully clothed. She put the damp cloth in the bowl provided and pulled the blanket off of the bed, laying it on the floor. She had no desire to sleep in the bed, she hated the cursed things.

The earthbender sent out a wave of bending into the house. Sokka had come in from the back yard a while ago, and was now bustling around in the house. Finishing letters, Minh had told him they had a post office and he could mail them out in the morning. The young girl was in the master bedroom of the house. She lay down on the stone floor and sighed in relief. She was exhausted, and just lying down was a wonderful treat.

* * *

Toph woke up from another bad dream. She lay panting on the floor tangled in her blanket. The young girl did not know what time of the night it was but it must have been late since she didn't hear any noises from either inside or outside the house. She was just getting back to sleep when she heard a knock on the door to her room. Sending out a wave of bending she found Sokka in front of the door, but he was not standing. Her friend was sitting cross legged on the floor with his back against the door and his sword in his lap. The blind bender was used to this. Ever since the desert he had slept that way, either against a rock on leaning on a wall of her earthtent. She knew he was keeping watch over her.

As the girl was "watching" the warrior, she felt his head fall back and hit the door, which corresponded with a loud knock echoing in the room. Meathead was dozing off and his head was banging on the door. Toph thought about it for a second then she got up and walked to the door. She didn't want to spend the night being woken every few minutes by Stupid beating his brains out.

The blind bender opened the door and the warrior fell in through the door way.

"Huh! What?" The young man asked surprised.

"Listen Meathead." The young girl told her friend. "You don't have a whole lot of brains to start with and I don't want to have to lead you around on a string like your mother used to do. So get up and go to your room."

"Oh, sorry." The tribesman replied, as he stood up. "Ok well good night then."

The two of them stood there for a moment then the girl asked,

"You're going to stay here aren't you?"

"Ahh, no, I'm going to my room." The boy said sleepily, holding his sword.

Neither one of them moved. Finally the blind girl said,

"You are so irritating! Ok, you can come in and sleep in the bed, I'm not using it, but no sitting up and watching all night. You have to lie down in the bed and be quiet."

"Ok." The warrior said, entering the room.

The boy walked into the room over to the bed dragging his blanket behind him. He seemed really tired. There was enough moon light coming in through the window for the young man to maneuver without hitting any furniture. He was dressed in the same tunic and drawstring pants Toph was wearing, although he did not have his robe on. The girl closed the door and went back to her blanket on the floor next to the bed. She lay down and pulled her own blanket over herself. She could hear the creak of the ropes and the sigh of the straw in the mattress as the boy lay down on the bed.

"Night Toph." The young man said.

"Night Snoozles." The young girl said.

Sokka lay on the bed staring down at his friend. There was a shaft of moon light coming in through the window that caressed the young girl on her blanket. He closed his eyes and was asleep in seconds.

* * *

Sokka was up early the next morning. He was careful not to disturb his friend as he left the room. He had a lot to do if they were to get a decent days walking in today.

The swordsman started by going out front to the large quadrangle in front of the house to do some sword drills. He pulled off his tunic to free his arms and to feel the brisk morning air on his skin. He felt better rested than he had in days and he wanted to enjoy it. He had woken up a few times in the night but had seen Toph lying safe in the moonlight next to the bed and gone right back to sleep.

The warrior's left leg still hurt, and Toph had not repaired his damaged leg brace yet, so he started slow and began with the forms he had adapted from watching his sister's waterbending, progressing up to air, then fire, then earth bending forms.

The First Sergeant watched from across the open field. _Oma and Shu_ she thought. She had never seen forms like that before. Even with his injured leg the young man moved beautifully.

"I've never seen those styles before." Lieutenant Ho said behind her.

Minh came to attention.

"No sir!" The NCO replied. "Watching him you can believe that he took on five benders and won."

"Stand easy" The XO said "I've heard you handle a sword better than anyone in the company."

"I do my best sir." The sergeant answered, relaxing her stance and facing the officer. "One shouldn't always rely on bending, as my old drill sergeant used to say."

"Well, we should spar sometime." The First Lieutenant said. "I'm sure you could teach me a lot."

"Well sir it would be my pleasure." Minh replied. "But from what I've heard you know how to use your sword as well as any man, if not better. I'm sure I would be learning a lot as well."

"Maybe we old farts could come up with some moves that would even surprise these young kids." The man suggested.

"I'm sure we could, sir." The woman affirmed, with a smile.

Ho returned Minh's smile.

* * *

Later that morning a sergeant, who was under orders from the First Sergeant.

("What! You want me to teach the Black Lotus how to use a bow? What if he goes crazy again and kills me?

"Just stay away from the girl and you'll be fine." Minh had reassured sergeant Truong.)

The archer was fearful at first, which surprised Sokka, but he eventually loosened up and the lesson had been very informative and actually fun. Sergeant Truong for his part was impressed by how quickly the young man picked up on his instructions and was particularly impressed with the questions the water tribesman asked. They were mostly "why" questions, which showed he wanted to know the reasons behind the techniques.

Eventually the sergeant replaced the bow the young man had ("Total piece of crap!" Truong had told him.) with another better bow, and a quiver with a built in bow case, and a sheaf of twenty arrows. Ten war arrows with armor piercing points, along with five broad head hunting arrows and five blunt flu flu birding and small game arrows.

Next was a corporal who had been recruited from the sand tribes.

("Whatever you do Altan, don't look at the girl, and you'll be fine." The Top Kick had told him.)

Who taught the warrior the basics of using the bolas lasso.

* * *

Toph had bathed (she really missed the rain bath Sokka had invented back in Ba Sing Se) and had put on her clean travel clothes. She felt much better with her own clothes on. Her hair was down in the long sheaf she had worn at the start of the journey. She had just finished packing when she heard the knock on the front door to the house.

Using her bending she felt it was _the..._ _ok ok,_ Minh at the door.

Opening the door the blind girl told the soldier,

"He's not here. He went someplace to get a food thing. He should be back soon though if you want to wait"

"Commissary for rations?" The sergeant asked.

"Maybe." The girl answered.

"Good because I wanted to talk to you." The trooper said. "Can I come in?"

"Ok." The girl answered walking into the front room. "About yesterday..."

"I don't want to talk about yesterday." The soldier said. "I want to talk to you about before, in the desert."

"The desert?"

"Yes." The woman told the girl. "I don't know what happened to you, I just know it was bad. And I think you should talk to someone about it. Doesn't have to be me or him even. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger, someone you'll never see again. But you should talk to someone."

"Is that it?" The girl asked.

"No, one more thing. It took me years to figure this one out." The woman said, nervously playing with the bandage on her right hand. "It was not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. You did not deserve what happened to you. They were evil bastards, who are experts at getting you when you are vulnerable, and keeping you helpless. There was nothing you did, and there was nothing you could do, once they had you."

"Ok, thanks." The girl said.

"Oh, one last thing." The soldier added. "It wasn't his fault either, so don't blame him. Just be thankful you had someone who loved you enough to do what he did."

"Yeah... Yeah..." The girl said thoughtfully.

The two of them stood silently in the room. The girl thinking about what the woman had told her.

* * *

The young man came through door in a flurry of activity. He had two bulging black shoulder bags. He handed one to Toph telling her,

"This is yours. It's full of jerky and hardtack." As an after thought he waved to the sergeant and said, "Hi Minh."

"Hi, so are you two ready to hit the road?" The trooper asked.

"Toph you ready?" The young man asked his friend.

"Yeah." The girl said in quiet voice, with her head down, then she lifted her face towards the tribesman and in a clear voice told him,

"Yeah, lets get out of here."

"Ok!" Her friend told her, as he began to shoulder all his gear.

* * *

"You should be careful when you go up into the hills." The First Sergeant told the pair as she set them onto the ancient road. "Our patrols haven't gotten that far yet, and we've heard stories of deserters from both armies holding out and taking over villages up there."

"We will." The warrior told her. "Thanks for everything."

"Yeah," The blind bender said bowing to the woman. "Thanks for everything."

"Anytime." The noncom replied.

The young man bowed to the woman and the two companions turned and began to walk down the road.

* * *

After about fifteen minutes they had left the outskirts of the town of My Lot behind. Toph sent out a wave of bending to see if the two of them were alone on the road. When she felt that they were, she turned to Sokka and asked,

"So Meathead, what exactly is a cunt?"

The young man sighed. _How do I get into these conversations._

"Well it has a number of meanings." The fifteen year old began. "First it is a rude name for a part of the female anatomy, next it is a pejorative term for a girl who..."

And the two friends continued down the road as the embarrassed boy continued with his explanation.

* * *

"So, guys have dicks and girls have cunts, right?" The blind girl asked.

It was late in the morning and the two travelers had left the town far behind.

"Right." The young man agreed.

"And the cunt is the same as the pussy?" The girl asked.

"Now-a-days, yes." The boy told her.

"And a boy can be a dick, and a girl can be a cunt?" She asked.

"Right." He told her.

"And a boy can be a pussy, but a girl can't be a dick?" She asked,

"Exactly." The boy said.

"That doesn't make sense." The young girl observed, frustrated.

"Your right, but that's life." The boy agreed.

The warrior stopped and looked just ahead. There was an old Roamer stone bridge over a gully. At some point in the past the roadway of the bridge had been destroyed by something and had been replaced by a wooden structure. This was going to be a problem. Toph would not be able to feel the bridge.

"Ahhhh, Toph we've got a problem." The warrior told the bender. "We've got a wooden bridge ahead. Maybe you could bend a new bridge so you can 'see' your way. Or you could bend steps down the side of the gully and up the other side."

The blind girl stood for a moment, then said,

"Or you could just lead me across like you usually do."

With that she reached out and took his hand in her own. It was a real act of courage for the young girl. She wasn't sure how she would react to the contact. If she would feel her skin crawl, if she could even stand to touch him.

Toph felt a wonderful warm tingle start in her hand. It moved up her arm, giving her goose bumps. She felt her heart begin to speed up and a warm flush move up into her face. She lowered her head to shyly hide her face from her friend.

"Or, yeah, I could just lead you across." The young man said, in a husky emotion filled voice.

And Sokka, holding her hand, led Toph over the bridge.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well I really want to apologize for being so late with this but I don't want to get yelled at, so I won't. :-)

This is late for a lot of reasons, one the weekend was crazy busy. Two the chapter gave me a lot of trouble. I started it three times and deleted everything before I got this one, and this version is completely different than what I originally had in mind. I just hope this works for everyone.

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Sifu Toph: Thanks, I blame it all on them. They are just too clever by half.

Fay of the Ink and Paper: I tried to reply directly to you but incase it didn't work; Yes Toph out did herself Sokka was really impressed. The poor girl will probably never be able to be the friend ever again. And no they won't admit anything even under oath.

Saxsui: What a great review, thanks so much. I'm glad the action scene worked for you. Really glad!

Shadow: Thanks, I am glad that their characters come across that way, I actually am trying for that and it is good to hear that I am succeeding.

x

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	27. Chapter 27

I'll Walk You Home pt 27

Chapter 9

pt. 1

Bridges

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Towards evening Sokka chose a camp site for them near a clear stream. He built a fire pit, collected wood, lit a fire and began to heat water for tea. He mixed more of the grated willow bark in with the tea leaves and set it aside to steep.

"How are you feeling?" The young man asked.

"Terrible!" Toph answered.

"Well your face is nice and purple now." The warrior observed. "And your eye is swollen completely shut."

"Thanks, for the purple, I kinda' know about the eye." The blind girl told him. "Since it's my eye and all!"

"Here have some tea." The swordsman handed her a cup. "Do you want me to look at your stomach?"

"Ahhhh…?" The girl said thoughtfully, taking the proffered cup, she then told her friend. "No thanks!"

"Just trying to help." The boy said defensively.

They had a quick dinner of jerky and hardtack, which were just giant hard crackers as far as Toph could tell. She was glad they had camped near a stream because she needed a lot of water to wash the awful things down.

Sokka laid out his cloak and began getting undressed for bed. Toph decided to not raise an earthtent. Last night had been the best night of sleep she had had in a while. She still woke up but the dreams were not as bad, and when she woke up her friend's snores had reassured her and had actually lulled her back to sleep, if that was even possible. So she decided to just lay her woven straw mat out beside his cloak.

"You better have this." Sokka said holding out his blanket to her. "The nights are getting cooler. I should have taken one of those blankets from the army. The next big town we come to we should get you a blanket and both of us should get some warmer clothes."

The young girl took the blanket and lay down onto her mat. She rolled over to face her friend and said,

"Hey Stupid?"

The boy, who had just lain down himself, and had not yet rolled himself into his cloak, rolled onto his side facing the girl and asked,

"Yeah?"

Toph's left arm shot out and she punched the young warrior in the chest. She rolled over onto her other side, with her back to the boy as she said,

"'Night Snoozles."

"'Night Toph." The tribesman replied in a strained voice.

The young girl wrapped herself in the blanket. It smelled of Sokka, sweat, leather, blood, steel, and meat. She inhaled deeply, and let the smell of him seep through her. It made her skin tingle and the hair on her arms stand up. She loved it.

xxxxxxx

Toph had a few bad dreams that night, but none of them were as bad as they had been. In one the Snow Cat had been searching for her, but she had used her bending to send it out into the frozen wastes of her dreamland.

Towards morning, at least she thought it was towards morning, she had another dream that she rather liked. She was in a low tent that smelled of the sun's heat, sand, and Sokka. She was sitting/lying on top of the young water tribe warrior, her hands on his naked chest, her head turned to the side as she rested against him. He was saying something to her but she could not make out the words. She could only feel the vibrations of his voice as it rumbled in his chest, and thrummed through her own chest. His hands were gently stroking her bare back, as he spoke. She wished she could understand him, she thought what he was saying was very important, but the feel of him under her was too wonderful for her to focus her mind to comprehend the meaning of the sounds.

The young girl woke up sometime later. She was lying on her stomach under the blanket. She pushed her hands out onto the earth and felt her surroundings. Sokka was up and moving. She focused on him as he trained off in a clear space by the camp. He must have woken earlier and was out doing martial arts forms. He had a long pole that he must have cut earlier, and was going through water tribe spear drills.

At first the girl thought the boy was naked, but after checking carefully, she realized that he was in his loin cloth. Using her bending she dug her hands deeper into the earth, so she could get a better feel for him. She always enjoyed "watching" him train. His movement was always interesting and changing, from fluid, to powerful, to delicate. He would try the same movement over and over again making little changes that only her bending could detect. He was beautiful.

Toph knew that Sokka was good looking, she had overheard enough comments about him to know that. But what all those sighted girls missed was his real beauty. His strength and gentleness, that only came through in his movement, and she felt that only she could witness that by using her bending. She used to wish that she could see, as she felt him train, but after sitting next to Ty Lee and Mai, one afternoon, she realized from how they spoke about him, that their eyes were blinding them to the real beauty created by the young man. Mai almost caught it, but only Toph could truly feel it.

The blind girl lay there for over an hour, until the warrior had finished. She sighed, and decided it was finally time to get up.

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After breakfast, and more willow tea, the two friends packed up and were on the ancient road again. Sokka had checked his map carefully looking for more bridges that they would have to cross, there should be three of them today. But he was very disappointed when he found that they were all intact. There was no need for him to take the young bender's hand and lead her across any of them. Of course he never told his companion any of this.

Truth be told the young girl was also disappointed, and seriously thought of destroying one or more of the bridges, but then realized that really wouldn't force them to hold hands. Of course she never told her companion any of this.

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That night as they got ready to go to sleep the young man commented,

"Your face is looking better, I think the swelling is down some. How are you feeling."

The girl was feeling better, her face felt stiff but no longer ached all the time. Her stomach still hurt, especially when she did any bending, which she had kept to a minimum during the day.

"Not as bad." She told him. "Except for my stomach."

"Let me take a look at it." The boy offered.

"I am not…" The girl began, but the young warrior cut her off with,

"You don't have to take anything off! I'll just poke and prod, and hurt you."

"Well if it's just going to hurt, that's ok." The bender said.

The boy shook his head. He thought if he told her it would hurt she might consent, since she wouldn't want to appear weak.

"Ok, so lie down on your back." The swordsman instructed. "And let me know how much it hurts."

The blind girl complied lying stiffly, waiting for the young man's ministrations. The boy knelt down beside his friend and moved her surcoat up and out of the way. He gently began to probe down from her belt. Once he had found her pelvic bones he pushed down slightly and asked,

"Does this hurt?"

"No!" The girl answered, in a tight voice.

Toph had pulled her long pony tail out from behind her, and was brushing the ends of her hair along her cheeks and mouth. The boy assumed she was playing with her hair to distract her from the pain he might be causing her. The young girl was doing it to distract her, but not from the pain.

"Well it doesn't seem like anything is broken." The boy told her.

Sokka began to softly push with his fingers, moving down and in towards her lower abdomen. Even through all the cloth he could feel Toph stiffen as he hit one spot.

"Hurt?" The tribesman asked.

"A little." The bender answered.

"Let me know if it gets too much." He told her, as he continued his gentle probing.

After some more probing she said in a tight voice,

"That's the spot."

"Sorry." The young man said, as he pulled his hands away and relaxed. "She must have hit you pretty good, but I don't think anything is broken. It's hard to tell, but it is really close to your second chakra so anytime you have a high chi flow through your body, like during bending, the energy will get backed up and trapped in the injury, which is what is causing the pain. When you get ready for bed, I'll give you a damp cloth you can put on it. That should make the swelling go down faster."

Toph's arm shot out and punched her friend in the arm.

"I'll do that." She told him.

The tribesman absently rubbed the new bruise on his arm as he told his friend,

"I'll go get some fresh water. Why don't you get ready for bed."

With that he stood up, grabbed the wok, and walked down to the stream.

Toph lay there for a moment before she realized that Sokka had left so she would have some privacy to get undressed. _Well that's a joke_ she thought, as she stood up and began to unbutton and pull off her travel clothes. _I wear more clothes when I'm undressed then Ty Lee does when she's fully dressed._

Once she was down to her under tunic and under shorts, she lay down on her sleeping mat and pulled the blanket over herself. She felt her eyes begin to burn. She wished she was pretty not an ugly "_cave troll"_ as Suki had called her. She knew that all the other girls who had been in the house were pretty. She had heard the comments of the boys as they had walked to the training grounds, or had gone shopping in the city. She had felt the way men looked at Suki, Mai, Katara, and especially the way they had looked at Ty Lee.

Ty Lee acted pretty. She would spend hours getting ready, even for training sessions, let alone for going out to shop or to a restaurant. Pinkle Toes would change her wrappings right there in the girls' bedroom, unlike Mai or Suki, who would go to the bathroom to change. The acrobat knew she was pretty and had the confidence that came from that knowledge.

Toph at first thought Katara was the same way, a little arrogant about her looks, always practicing her waterbending in just her under wraps. Sokka was the same way, he would wander around the camp in just his loin cloth, let alone whenever he was near water. It wasn't until the tribesman explained that in the water tribe whenever you were indoors and with family that you would take your clothes off. Something about sharing body heat. The brother and sister were not proud of their looks, they just didn't care. She knew for a fact that Sokka felt he was not very attractive, that the young man actually envied Zuko and Haru their good looks. _He is such an idiot!_

But the young earthbender had also heard what the boys and men had said about her. She had felt the way they had looked at her as she walked with the other girls through the city. She was sure that was the reason Sokka didn't love her. She was just a _cave troll_ to him. From the play she knew that Yue was a beautiful princess. She knew that Suki had to be pretty. It was no wonder that he didn't love the blind girl. Who could?

Toph wiped the tears away as she felt the young man return to the camp site. _No!_ She decided she was not going to worry about how she looked. If Sokka didn't care about clothes and how he looked then she wasn't going to either. _Of course it's easy for him._ She told herself, _he's gorgeous_. She knew that from the way all the girls talked about him in the house, and on the street, or while watching him train, or on the train for that matter, or in the market, or in the shops, or in the restaurants, _OH STOP IT! So he's gorgeous, he doesn't think of himself that way, and he doesn't act that way, just give it a rest!_

As the warrior came back into camp, Toph turned her head towards him and asked,

"Where did you learn about chakras and chi and all that?"

"Ty Lee taught me." The warrior answered. "It was all part of her chi blocking."

_Pinkle Toes again!_ The girl thought.

"Peach Fuzz is really smart." The boy said. "She just hides it all the time. She likes to appear brainless, she probably thinks boys don't like smart girls."

Sokka began to bustle about the camp site, stepping over the blind bender a number of times.

_Ty Lee has to be smart just to keep track of all her underwear._ The young girl thought. She remembered a day in the house when the acrobat was standing, naked, with everything hanging out, which made Toph very uncomfortable, over her bed, trying to decide what to wear. Pinkle Toes must have had a dozen sets of wrappings, yes she had sets, matching tops and bottoms, laid out and couldn't decide which ones to put on. The blind girl remembered how inadequate she felt in the same room with the acrobat. Toph's own female attributes, _my tiny tits, and no hips,_ could not compare with the Fire Nation girl, who the bender could feel perfectly as the older girl stood naked on the stone floor.

"It's underwear, what difference does it make." Toph had told the gorgeous girl.

The bender had then sat in a chair and pulled her feet off the floor just so she wouldn't have to feel the beautiful form in the room with her.

"It makes all the difference." Ty Lee had answered in a hurt tone. "It's the basis for your look. If you get your underwear wrong you'll get everything wrong, and have to start over again."

"Take this set for example." The older girl said pointing to a combination on the bed, and taking on an instructional tone to her voice. "This set is for training in. Lots of support and comfort, but looks like I'm wearing armor. Or this set, good support and comfort, but it gives me better form for acrobatics and is not as heavy. These," she said pointing to another set. "Are fine around the house, but what if we are going out later, then I should wear these, not a lot of support or comfort, but it gives me a good silhouette in my nice outfits. Or this one, all red and lacy for those special occasions, but it's really uncomfortable with all the wire. You have to get these things right, and I can't do that without knowing what I'm going to be doing tonight."

_Don't forget about the set you have to wear when you go to the bathroom and you want Meathead to see you and fall in love with you._ Toph thought to herself. Aloud she said,

"Just put on the around the house ones, and if we go out you'll have to change anyway."

Pinkle Toes was always changing her clothes.

"That's a great idea!" The acrobat squealed. "You're so clever, I wish I was as smart as you."

_Yeah right!_ Toph thought.

"Here!" Sokka said, holding out a damp cloth to the bender, as she lay under the blanket.

"What?" The girl asked, surprised back to the here and now by the boy's voice.

"For your stomach." The warrior said, bobbing the cloth up and down in his hand.

"Oh, yeah." The young bender said, reaching for the cloth.

"You should push your shorts down first." The tribesman advised. "Otherwise they will get wet, and you'll be cold and miserable all night."

"Oh… right." The blind girl said.

Toph reached under the blanket, untied the draw string on her shorts, and pushed them down past her hips. She then took the proffered cloth and moving it under the blanket placed it on her bruised abdomen. The cold was a shock and she stiffened, and her eyes opened wide in response.

"Waaahhhhh… cold." The girl commented.

"That's good." The boy said. "Too bad we don't have any snow around."

"No it isn't!" The bender said, shivering.

Sokka laughed at that, then he held out a second cloth saying,

"Here's one for you face. Now don't go to sleep with them on, or you'll be wet and cold all night. Just leave them on for about a half an hour, then put them in the wok, so you can use them in the morning."

"Don't worry." The girl told him, taking the cloth and putting it on her face. "I'm taking them off as soon as I can, snow or no snow."

"Leave them on for at least a half an hour." The boy said, in a serious tone. "Or they won't do you any good.

"OK, ok" The young bender conceded. "It's a good thing I'm not pretty like Peach Fuzz." She went on in a sarcastic tone. "Or I wouldn't be able to wear any of my clothes without showing off how I got hurt in a fight."

"Oh I wouldn't worry about that." The warrior told her in a light tone. "Right now your face speaks volumes about your last fight, in which you kicked a veteran soldier's butt with no problem, while inventing a whole new form of earthbending. And besides," he went on in a more serious tone. "You're not pretty, you're beautiful."

"Oh come off it Stupid." The girl retorted. "I'm ugly, and always will be. An ugly Cave Troll."

"Don't say that!" Sokka told her, anger flashing in his voice.

Suddenly the young man was lying down beside the bender, supporting himself on his right elbow, so that his face was hanging over her own. She could feel his body up against hers, as she lay there.

"That's really annoying Toph." The warrior told her, his voice serious. "I hate it when you run yourself down like that. You're a beautiful girl, and you're turning into a beautiful young woman. Ty Lee wishes she could be like you, beautiful, smart, strong, the greatest bender who will ever live, the bravest person in the world. Who wouldn't envy you."

"Do you mean that?" The girl asked in a quiet voice.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't!" The boy answered, then his voice grew quiet and deep. It was the voice he used on the few times Toph had heard him talk about Yue.

"You have beautiful hair and skin." Then she felt his fingers move her bangs away to the sides of her face, as he told her,

"And the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. And the nicest nose and mouth," he said as his finger traced the line of her nose, and then dropped to touch her lips, until it rested on her chin.

"You're chin's ok." He told her, in a very serious version of his normal voice. "I've seen four maybe five better, but it's still very good. And I have my most serious face on so you better believe me."

That got a smile from the young girl.

"You are beautiful and special." He told her, serious again. "And you are my friend, and I won't let anyone say bad things about my friend, not even you."

Through her bending Toph could feel his face hanging over her own. She could feel his breath on her face. All she had to do was raise her head, just a little, and their lips would touch. But she couldn't find the courage to even try, instead she said,

"I'm your friend too."

"Thanks, that makes me glad." The boy answered.

"But that doesn't mean I like you." The girl told him.

"Oh don't worry about that." The tribesman said, in a light hearted tone. "I am well aware of that."

"Ok, as long as we're clear on that." The bender told him.

"Oh very clear." Sokka replied.

Toph felt the warrior lower his face towards her own, then she felt something rub back and forth on her nose, then the boy was up, and stepping over the girl to his own makeshift bed.

"What was that?" The blind girl asked, rubbing her nose.

"Nothing, that's just how we say good night back home." The young man answered, as he began to undress.

"Oh… Good night Snoozles." She told him, still rubbing her nose.

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That night Toph dreamt about Ty Lee and underwear, it was an unpleasant dream until Toph buried Peach Fuzz.

Later she dreamt about touching Sokka all over at the same time, which was crazy, but it was very real in the dream. And he was giving off some sort of warm, welcoming energy that she could feel as she touched him. It was a crazy dream but she really liked it.

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The next day they passed through a small village that looked as though it had not done well during the occupation. No one was on the street, there was only one, but Toph told Sokka that there were people in the houses, looking out the windows at the two travelers.

"Must be frightened of strangers." The warrior observed. "Can't blame them, with the war and all."

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Later in the afternoon of the same day, Toph felt Sokka touch her shoulder as he whispered,

"Wait up a second."

"What?" The girl asked in a whisper.

"Just a second." The boy whispered back.

The young bender heard a quiet grunt then the sound of boomerang flying away. It flew straight ahead for some time, low to the ground, then the sound moved over to the left, and finally the sound stopped with a high pitched cry of some animal.

"What was that?" The blind girl asked.

"Dinner!" The warrior crowed, as he held out his hand to her.

Toph took the offered appendage, and was nearly pulled off her feet as the young man dragged her off at a run. Running hand in hand with Sokka brought back a flood of memories and feelings for Toph. And by the end of the short run both of them were panting, but not because of the exertion.

The young girl heard the young man chant in that old language of his for a moment. It sounded like a cross between a song and a prayer, then she heard a muffled crack.

"What's going on?" The bender asked.

"It's a young rabaroo." The hunter explained, in an excited voice. "I got it with boomerang. I didn't think I would, it was such a long throw."

"Oh…" The young girl said.

"I'll dress it here, it will only take a couple of minutes." The boy explained. "Then I can skin it when we make camp."

"Dress it?" The blind girl asked.

"Clean out the organs." The boy said, pulling out his knife.

Toph smelt blood. She was feeling a little sick. When she was growing up, meat was something that came prepared and cooked into a dish. When she had joined the Gaang, Sokka would go off hunting and come back with meat that Katara would cook for the three of them. She had never been there when the young hunter had actually killed and butchered an animal, and the feel and smell of it was starting to turn her stomach.

"Do you want the liver?" The swordsman asked holding something out to her.

"Ah… no thanks." The girl answered. "You go ahead."

"The liver's got the best stuff in it." The boy told her.

Toph shook her head. The thought of eating raw liver was stomach churning to her.

"Ok." The young hunter said, popping the organ into his mouth and chewing with relish.

True to his word the boy was finished in less than five minutes, and had hung the dead animal from his pack. He wiped his knife and hands on the ground and stood up.

"All set?" Sokka asked Toph, who had moved away during the dressing.

"Yeah" The bender responded, and the two of them set out on the road again.

"We should be able to get dinner and a little breakfast out of this little one." The hunter told his friend. "If it had been much older it would have been too big for the two of us. Meat goes bad so fast here, not like at home. Meat never goes bad at home."

"Yeah…" The young bender replied, in a quiet voice.

xxxxxx

That night after setting up camp, Sokka skinned the rabroo and cooked it on a spit over the fire. The fresh meat tasted really good and there was even some left for breakfast the next day.

Toph was surprised at how the young hunter let nothing go to waste. He made soup from the internal organs, had cleaned and stretched the guts to use for thread, and after they had eaten their fill of the meat, he cleaned the bones, the smaller ones to make needles out of, and the larger ones he saved to make jewelry and tools out of. The skin he stretched on a frame he made from sticks lashed together, and planned to use the animal's brains to tan the hide in the morning once it had dried.

The young girl was impressed at how the young hunter did everything. _He's killed hundreds, maybe thousands of animals._ She told herself. _This is the real Sokka._

"Is this the way you hunt back in the south?" Toph asked.

"No," Sokka told her. "Back home we hunt from boats a lot, and on the ice, mostly you look for air holes and stand around and wait forever."

"What do you mean?" The girl asked.

"Well seals need holes in the ice to breathe from." The young man told her. "So when you find a hole you stand there with your harpoon and wait for a seal to stick its nose up, and you harpoon it. Sometimes you wait five minutes, sometimes you wait all day, and sometimes the seal never comes back. It's real boring, so you think about things. But you can't get too distracted or you'll miss your chance, and you'll only get one."

"Then once you hit it, you have to play it, or else it will pull the harpoon out, or break the line, the rope. So that takes a while, maybe an hour or two. Then when the seal is tired out, you have to pull it over to the hole and you try to kill it with your lance, which is a spear that is just a sharp point but has no barbs on it, 'cause you don't want it to stick in the game. Then once you kill the seal, you have pull it out through the hole, which is usually too small so you have to make it bigger to get the seal out. Once you get the seal out it starts to freeze, so you have to get right to work to dress it and get it ready to haul back to the village."

"In short, it's real boring with a lot of work thrown in on top." The boy finished, his voice telling the bender that it was no big deal, it was just the way things were.

"And you had to do this for your entire village?" The young bender asked him. "All by yourself when you were my age?"

"Well yeah." Sokka said. "You do what you have to do. It's not like any of us had any choice in it."

Toph stood up then and walked over to the young hunter were he sat by the fire.

"I'm glad you're my friend." The young bender told him.

Then she took his face in her hands, and lowering her own face held his fast as she rubbed her nose against his.

"Good night Snoozles." The girl said, as she walked over to her sleeping mat and got ready for bed.

"Good night Toph." The boy replied.

Xxxxxxxxxxxx

Toph slept well that night. The young man's snores calmed her whenever she woke up from a bad dream. They even invaded one of her dreams and calmed her to the point that she didn't even wake up. In the early morning she had one last dream that she tried with all her might not to wake up from.

She was in a low tent that smelled of warm sun and sand. She was lying on top of Sokka, her face against his bare chest, her hands moving slowly down from his face to his neck, feeling the wonderful warmth of his tight skin. Her knees were on either side of his hips. He was scratching her naked back in those wonderful long strokes he used. He was telling her something. She felt the words vibrate through the young man's chest, against her face, her lips, her tongue, her breasts. The taste of him ran up from the tip of her tongue into her chest, down her breasts and stomach till it settled deep down inside her, lighting a small, tickling/itching fire.

The young girl pulled herself up to hear his words more clearly. Her breasts crushed against the hard muscles of his chest, as she dragged her lips and tongue up to the hollow of his neck. Tasting the salty sweat from his skin. Her breasts were tight and tender against him. Her stomach pulsed against his. Each word he spoke sent delicious tingles up from his chest through her breasts into her heart, causing it to leap against her ribs.

The tickling itch became warmer, and more demanding. The pain in her face and side were gone, now there was only the feel, the smell, the taste of the warrior under her, and the itch inside of her. She moaned as the fire inside her grew, and grew. Then she finally heard the words that were coming from the young man under her and the fire/itch/tickle flared and consumed her in its heat as she heard him say,

"Maybe, it's that I like you more than I ever liked Suki."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well only a day late. I have to stop re-writing chapters. I start on one idea and then I read it and realize just how terrible it is and have to start all over. I am glad I did that on this one. I much prefer this chapter to the one I originally had written.

I tried to put in some fluff (I'm not good at fluff) I just hope there was enough for the readers. There will be shenanigans in the next chapter.

See Ayriannah I didn't even mention apologizing this time. ^_^

Thanks to everyone who is reading the story and well you know the rest, but just because of that doesn't mean it isn't true. To all the reviewers thanks so much, you guys are great!

xxxx

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	28. Chapter 28

I'll Walk You Home pt 28

Chapter 9

pt. 2

Warm Nights

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The first time Toph woke up the next morning she felt really tired and more than a little drained. She used her bending to find out where Meathead was. She found him out in a clearing just off of their camp, but he was just standing there not doing anything interesting, so she curled up in the blanket, _his blanket,_ and went back to sleep.

The second time the blind girl woke up was much later. She could hear her companion moving quietly about the campsite. Toph felt really good, rested and relaxed. She stretched luxuriously in her bed. If she didn't have to pee badly she could have stayed in bed all day, she felt that good.

"Morning." Sokka quietly said.

Toph rolled over onto her side towards where the _wonderful, gentle, deep, _voice had come from and said,

"Morning Snoozles."

The young girl lay there a while longer, just enjoying being in bed, enjoying the knowledge that the young man was there with her. Just knowing that he was there, nearby, made her feel good. She smiled to herself. It was funny. She had determined to go on this journey to get away from the infuriating idiot, but now she loved the fact that he was here, with her. The tribesman was not doing anything special, just puttering around their little camp. Minh had been right, Toph was happy that she had someone who loved her enough to do what he had done for her. Not just the rescue in the desert, but more that he had come with her. That had been his greatest gift to her. To have given up all his plans, and she knew how much he loved his plans, to have given up his sister, his friends, and his girlfriend, so he could be with the young bender.

The small smile grew into a large grin. She felt the hunter just a short distance away, doing something by the fire. She could reach out and touch him, grab him, hold him, crush him to her in an exquisite hug. Her heart did a happy little dance in her chest at just the thoughts running through her head.

Then there had been the dream.

It was fading now, Toph wished she could hang onto the dream, but as she tried to grab it, the feelings would recede into her memory. But she could remember some of it. The feel of the warrior's skin under her hands, the smell of him under her, and the taste of his naked chest. Blood rushed up to her face at the memory. The memories were too real to be real, but there was something about them that felt good, and wonderful, and solid. Then there had been the words Sokka had spoken.

The young girl could not remember what the young man had actually said in the dream, but she knew it was about her, and she knew it made her feel happy and warm and wanted. Just thinking about that part of the dream started a little warm tickle deep down inside her. The memory caused a small low sigh/hum to escape from her.

"Shall I serve you breakfast in bed, my lady?" Sokka asked, as he squatted by the fire. "Or is the proper form of address 'Your Highness'?"

"Neither." The girl told him.

"Ok Bandit." The boy said with a smile.

Breakfast in bed sounded very good to the blind bender. If Sokka always felt this good in the morning Toph finally understood why her friend always asked for five more minutes. She would love to spend the day in bed today, if it meant she could feel this way the whole day. She wished she could spend the rest of her life feeling this way. _"Five more lifetimes."_ She requested in her head, and why not? There was no Madame Wang to get her up promptly at day break, just the wonderful young man who would care for her, who would tell her how beautiful she was, who would tell her how much he loved her.

_"He never said that!" _Madame Wang's voice told her emphatically.

_"He said something!"_ Toph answered back.

_"In a dream, and you can't even remember what it was he said to you."_ The old teacher scolded. _"Besides you have to pee!"_

The old biddy was right. It had been a dream, and Toph could not remember exactly what the young man had said, but she knew it was loving, and kind, and gentle, and most of all he had accepted her, had wanted her.

Unfortunately the second part was also true. The young girl really had to pee. She crossed her ankles and squeezed her legs together to try to hold off the need for a little longer, but it didn't help at all. It actually made the little tickle worse. It also made the bender realize that she must have left the cold compress on her stomach too long last night since her loin cloth and shorts were damp down between her legs.

Toph finally decided she had better get up, if she waited much longer she would have to run to get someplace she could pee before she couldn't hold it in any longer, and she didn't want that. She sat up and let the blanket fall off her.

Sokka saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and looked over to where his friend had been lying down. A warm smile spread across his face as he saw her sitting on her sleeping mat. Toph looked so adorable, he couldn't help himself. Her hair looked like an explosion of impenetrable darkness around her head, and she had the cutest, happiest smile on her face. She definitely looked rumpled but beautiful all the same. The young man held his breath, he didn't want to do anything to disturb this moment. It was so rare to see Toph looking so happy, so at peace, that he just wanted to enjoy it.

Toph lazily stretched, more just to enjoy stretching, she didn't need to, the young girl had never felt so relaxed in her life. The young man watched her, enjoying her enjoyment. _"Yeah… and it looked pretty good too!"_ He told himself. _"Shut up, she's only a kid!_ He admonished the lecherous part of his personality, but the swaggering teenager in his mind didn't seem to notice. And truth be told she did look really good stretching, with just a hint of bare flat stomach showing as her tunic rode up on her shoulders.

The young girl rolled onto her hip and stood up. She was facing away from the warrior. She reached up with both hands and scratched her head. It took her a moment to feel the cool air on her bare butt. She had not retied the draw string on her shorts the night before, and they had slipped down to her thighs and the only thing covering her backside was the narrow strip of cloth of her fundoshi. It took another moment for that fact to register. She reached down and grabbed her shorts pulling them up into place and tying the waist securely.

Toph felt the blood rush to her face and neck. "_Oh calm down!"_ She told herself. _"It's not like he hasn't seen more than that_. _Hell he's had his hands all over me._" But that thought just increased the blush covering her face, and the heat radiating from her ears. The blind bender tapped her toes and felt the young man was not even looking in her direction. He was very studiously staring at the fire. _Maybe a little too studiously?_ The young girl thought.

Sokka was squatting down staring into the fire, though he did not see it. Thanks to his training he had the ability to recall any image that had flashed before his eyes, and examine it in detail later. He was doing so now, and as a result was distracted when Toph asked him her question.

"What?" The boy asked.

"I asked is there a spot by the stream where I can wash up a little?" The girl replied, turning to her friend.

"Ahh… oh… yeah." The young man answered, turning towards the beautiful girl, trying desperately to focus on her eyes, which was tough since she never actually made eye contact with him.

The tribesman had washed earlier, after his training and knew of a good spot but he also knew something else and suggested,

"But the water is really cold, let me heat some for you and you can wash here."

The boy expected a curt reply, about not needing his help to wash, or did he think that she was afraid of the cold, or did he think that she was afraid of getting wet or something along those lines, but was very pleasantly surprised when she told him,

"Thanks, that would be nice."

"Great!" The young man replied, picking up the wok and heading down hill towards the stream.

The young girl went off to take care of her own business, with the blush and a smile on her face.

* * *

Toph was naked, not her favorite condition, kneeling in her earthtent, rummaging in her clothes bag. She had just finished her spit bath, the hot water had been wonderful. The thought of standing naked, with everything just hanging out, in the middle of a cold stream had horrified the girl. The young bender hated being naked, especially having her breasts just hanging out. Well actually that was the problem, they didn't hang, the girl's breasts sort of _just stuck out, all soft, and pointy, and ugly._ She was less concerned about the rest of her body. If she could just have her chest wrapper on she wouldn't mind so much. She continued to search for her spare set of underwear in her bag. Sokka had bundled it all together and left it rolled in her spare under tunic on her bed, and she knew she had packed it.

"Ah Fuck!" The bender said.

She had just remembered that she didn't have an extra set of underwear any more. They had been torn off of her by _that asshole sand bender_ in the desert.

"Shit! Fuck!" The girl cursed.

Now she just had the one pair of shorts, one loin cloth, and worst of all one breast wrap for the rest of the trip. _I'm glad Sokka killed you, you son of a bitch._ She only wished she had had a chance at the _evil bastard_. But Meathead had done the job for her. _What had Minh called it?_ The young bender asked herself, remembering the conversation. _Oh yeah," the perfect kill"._

_Wait!_ The blind girl thought. _My under tunic should be ok. I wasn't wearing it when they grabbed me. _She paused a moment wondering,_ Why didn't I have it on?_ She tried to remember but it was all jumbled in her mind and she couldn't recall what had actually happened. She felt in her bag and found what she thought was the rolled up bundle that was her spare tunic, and pulled it out.

As Toph shook out the rolled up tunic she felt something land in her bare lap. She pulled the tunic on, which felt better even if she still felt naked without her chest bindings on and her, _oh ok my bumps,_ tits just seemed to be too grand a word for her meager breasts, were still unrestrained. She reached down to examine what had fallen out of the bundle.

The something were actually three things, a loin cloth, a pair of under shorts, and a breast wrapper. The small bender checked out each item with her hands. They had been patched and repaired. It wasn't the greatest repair job in the world, but it was strong and well done. Sokka would never be a seamstress but he had done a good job.

The young girl slipped the wrapper up under the tunic and setting it on her breasts, pulled the ends around her back then drawing them tight in the front, tied the familiar knot under the center of her breasts. She slipped off of her knees, letting her bare butt hit the ground as she leaned back against the wall of her tent. Her eyes were burning with tears.

This young man, who could kill and gut a cute little rabaroo without a thought, who could end a man with a "Perfect Kill", must have stayed up some night, when he was already exhausted, with his little needle and thread doing the best he could, just so Toph could have some clean underwear. The young girl let the tears roll down her face. He really was a special boy.

* * *

The two travelers got a late start that morning but eventually they were on the road again.

"Your face is really spectacular today." Sokka finally said.

The young man had noticed that Toph's eyes were red when she had left her tent that morning, and was worried that her bruises were causing her a lot of pain.

"What do you mean?" The girl asked touching her face.

"Well the swelling is way down, but you've added some new colors." The boy explained. "Not so much red, a lot more blue and purple and some yellow around the edges. How's the eye?"

"It doesn't hurt anymore, and I can open it a little now." The bender answered.

"Well that's good." He replied. "Stomach?"

"S'ok." She answered.

Sokka stopped there, he didn't want to pry. Toph could be touchy about anything, and injuries she had received in a fight would be high on her list of touchy subjects.

* * *

In the afternoon the tribesman noticed that there were more trees along the ancient way. After a while he commented,

"Trees."

"Rocks." Toph replied.

"No… "The young man replied with a chuckle. "It's just that we had never seen trees before we left home, and Katara and I thought they were really amazing. Giant things growing out of the ground and all."

"For me trees are just their roots." The bender explained. "I can't feel anything much up above ground."

"For me they are just crazy." The boy told her. "They are plants which is new and strange to start with, and they are huge, some of them ten times taller than I am. As we go higher into the hills we will probably get into a forest. Forests are just magical, all those trees, thousands and thousands of them all together like that. The first real forest I was ever in was back when we first met Jet."

"Katara had a thing for him didn't she?" Toph asked.

"Yeah…" Sokka said with a laugh. "I thought he was a jerk but she thought he was totally cool. It takes one to know one, I guess."

"You're not a jerk!" The blind girl told him, irritation in her voice.

"You may get an argument from Katara on that point." The tribesman replied. "Anyway I thought he was a jerk, but even I had to admit he was a cool jerk. He was a non bender but he was still kicking butt, and he and the freedom fighters lived up in these trees. Which for Tara and me was just the coolest of the cool. I mean they would run around on the branches from tree to tree and stuff."

The young man became excited and started to gesticulate with his arms as he went on,

"And Longshot, I mean he was totally off the hook. He could hang upside down and hit anything with that bow of his. I never really thought much of his skill until I started to try and learn how to shoot myself. But now I know just how great he was."

"What do you think happened to them?" The young girl asked.

"Longshot and Smellerbee?" The apprentice archer asked. "Well you were there. I don't know, maybe you had to be able to see to tell, but you know Jet was dying, and Smellerbee had this total crush, hero worship thing for him, so you know she wasn't going to leave him there."

At the description of the relationship between Smellerbee and Jet, Toph pulled her long sheaf of hair over her shoulder and began to brush it against her face. The swordsman went on,

"And Longshot was totally in love and devoted to Bee, so he was going to stay there as long as she did. I mean it was pretty obvious that Longshot would give his life just to give Smellerbee a moment of happiness. I figure if the Dai Li didn't capture them, then the two of them were buried when Long Fen had the secret base destroyed."

"So, if the Dai Li had say captured Smellerbee," The small bender asked. "Then the archer guy would have chased them down and risked his life, would have done whatever he had to do, to free her?"

"Oh yeah!" The warrior emphatically told her. "You could see that he was totally in love with her, and would have done anything to keep her safe."

"Well for me," The bender said, in a quiet voice. "I hope they both got away, and are happy somewhere."

With that the girl reached out and took the boy's hand as they walked along the road. Sokka looked towards Toph as he held her hand, but she had her face turned away from him at that time, so he couldn't see her expression. He could only feel his own heart skip a beat and his stomach flutter inside him at the contact with her. He squeezed her hand gently as he replied,

"Yeah… Me too."

And the boy and the girl walked down the ancient road hand in hand.

* * *

They made an early camp that evening. There didn't seem to be any hurry and Sokka saw a good place to camp in a copse of trees on a low hill to the side of the road. There was no convenient stream nearby but he had filled their small water skins only an hour or two before.

The young man laid out his cloak on the ground and the young girl laid her sleeping mat beside the cloak. As usual he carefully positioned his weapons around his bed, so he could grab them at need but they would still be protected against the morning dew which was getting heavier with the farther into the fall the year was moving.

After their cold supper the two travelers undressed, Sokka down to his loin cloth, Toph down to her under tunic and under shorts. As the young man sat on his ground cloth/cloak he looked to the pretty bender and asked her,

"How's your face?"

The young girl stood, working her jaw for a moment then touched the right side of her face and replied,

"Fine. It doesn't hurt any more, and I can open my eye most of the way."

"Here, sit down and let me take a look at it." The handsome young man suggested, patting the girl's sleeping matt, near where he was sitting.

After a moment the twelve year old sat down cross legged facing the teenager. Sokka shifted up onto his knees, sitting on his ankles beside the lovely girl. She could feel his long leg against her own right leg, as he moved next to her. The warmth from his muscular thigh spread to her own, kindling a little fire inside of her, and causing her stomach to flip about happily. She brought her hands down into her lap and tried to remember to breath.

"Let me know if this hurts." The fifteen year old warrior told her.

Toph felt the callused tips of the young man's hands as they gently touched her chin and forehead. The fingers on her forehead moved down the right side of her face, pausing over her eye brow, while the fingers on her chin gently moved her head to the side.

The fingers, feather light, stroked down her face to the line of her jaw.

"Ok?" He quietly asked.

"Yeah…" She replied.

"Here, this is something my mother used to do." Sokka said, nervously licking his lips.

With an exaggerated pucker he brought his lips to her temple, near her eye, and gave her face the gentlest of kisses, he then dropped his hands and sat back on his heels.

"All better." He said with a little laugh. "Just like your mom used to do."

Toph forgot to breath.

Toph could not remember her mother ever even touching her, let alone kissing her.

"Do you…" The twelve year old girl had to swallow before she could go on, but she was determined to be as uncaring about her appearance as the young man beside her was.

"Do you want to look at my stomach?" She finally asked.

"Ahhh…." The teenage boy started to say.

Toph was surprised by his reaction, but then she thought about the timing of her question, and the blood that was in her face was suddenly spreading to her ears, hair, and making the bindings under her tunic much too tight for her small breasts.

"I don't mean you should kiss my stomach or anything like that." The young girl gasped out.

"Toph I would be happy to kiss your stomach, if it made you feel better." The young man told her with a smile in his voice, and placing his warm hand on her knee. "Hell Toph, I'd kiss your ass if it made you feel better."

"Me too." The girl replied. "I mean I'd be happy to kiss your… stomach… ah…not…"

The bender stopped right there, realizing that no matter how she ended that sentence it would be a disaster.

"Thanks!" The boy told her, squeezing her knee. "I appreciate that."

The teenager then let go of her knee and shifted around lying down on his cloak, and pulling it about him.

"Well we should get some sleep if we want to get an early start tomorrow." He said.

"Yeah, yeah." Toph replied, lying down herself and pulling the blanket around her.

She rolled over onto her left side facing away from _Dreamy._

"Well good night." The handsome young man said.

The young girl felt his hand scratch down and up her back a few times. Even through the blanket and her clothes it felt wonderful and sent a thrill through her. When it stopped she rolled over to face her best friend.

"Good night Snoozles." She told him.

Toph felt him shift on his bed as he moved his face towards her own. She craned her neck to bring her own face towards his. Their noses met and each rubbed against the other. The twelve year old girl could almost feel his lips against her own as he whispered,

"Sleep tight."

Then his face was gone, as she felt him shift onto his stomach. The blind bender rolled onto her other side and pulled the blanket up to cover her nose, which still tingled from the contact with the young warrior. She inhaled the smell of him from the rough wool. It was different now, but it was still wonderful and she loved it, and she let it flow through her as she drifted off to sleep.

Toph did not realize that the scent of the blanket was different because her own had been added to that of the young man's, and it now smelled of both of them.

* * *

Sokka was cold. He was not freezing or anything, he was not even shivering, but he was cold, and it was waking him up, which he did not like. His bed was really lumpy too, which added to his discomfort, since it had been a fairly comfortable bed when he had lain down on it. He had picked a spot with lots of leaf litter just so it would be comfortable, better than sleeping on the hard ground at least.

The lump in the young man's bed was rather large, extending from the top of his chest down to just above his feet. The lump was half under him, or half of him was on top of the lump. He ran his hand down the length of it and the lump moved and mumbled something.

_Ok…_ he lump was actually his companion. He opened his eyes and saw that it was either very late or very early, it depended on whether he got back to sleep or not. In the dim light he took in the camp site and determined what had happened. Toph's sleeping mat was where she had set it up last night but Toph was no longer on it. She was now half buried under Sokka. She must have gotten cold in the night and crawled under the warmest thing she could find which was the teenager sleeping next to her. This had pushed him almost completely off of his cloak, which was also his blanket so now about half of the young man was, since he was nearly naked in just his loin cloth, exposed to the cool night air.

He had a number of choices. One he could shove the girl back onto her mat, which would result in her waking up and probably inflicting grievous bodily damage and internal injuries to the tribesman. A fate he had just avoided when he had stroked the lump since Toph was face down and he had run his hand along her back as opposed to… the more dangerous part of the earthbender.

Two he could pull the blanket, which was tightly wrapped around the girl under him, off of her and cover both of them with it, which would probably have the same result as his first option.

Three he could get up, which was not really an option at this time of night.

Or four, he could just lay there and sleep as best he could with at least half of him in a warm comfortable state. He chose option four. As he started to drift back into sleep he realized that it wasn't fair, even Toph's snoring was adorable. He also noticed that her hair smelled really good. Finally he realized that there were going to have to be new sleeping arrangements the next time they camped.

* * *

Sokka woke up again that morning when something cold and wet pushed up against his face. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming or not, until he opened his eyes and saw a large black nose up against his own.

It took him a moment before he could focus both his eyes and his brain and recognize who it was.

"Oh, hi Fox Guy." The tribesman whispered, not wanting to wake up his friend.

The Fox-Wolf looked to the girl, set down her book and licked the warrior's face.

"Thanks." The boy said.

The Fox-Wolf was cold and tired. She had been traveling for the whole day and night. She watched with interest as the Water Tribe boy reach into a bag he had and pulled out some dried meat, and offered it to her. She accepted it gratefully. She had not been able to hunt for days. She ate the meat with relish. When she was finished she moved around to the open side of the boy and lay down snuggling up against his warm body. She lay her head down on her front paws and went to sleep.

"Well it seems like the Universe has finally found a use for me." The tribesman told no one in particular, and went back to sleep.

* * *

Toph woke up alone sometime after sunrise. It took her a while to realize that she was not on her mat but on Sokka's foul smelling cloak. The young man was out on some open ground practicing with his boomerang. She had found out the morning before he had been practicing his archery. She used her bending to "watch" him for a while before getting up.

* * *

They covered a lot of milles that day. The weather was cool and clear.

Sokka theorized about why some of the leaves on some of the trees were changing color. Toph was unable to help him. She did not know that leaves changed color. Neither one was aware that some trees lost all their leaves in the fall.

They ate a cold lunch on a pleasant little hill by the side of the road. Toph was getting tired of dried meat and hard crackers. She remembered the taste of the fresh meat of two nights ago with a mouth watering nostalgia. She thought about suggesting that they take some time to go hunting tomorrow.

After gearing up and getting to his feet Sokka offered his hand to the young bender. Toph took his hand in both of her own and pulled, nearly toppling him over.

"Oh, so it's going to be that way is it?" The handsome young man asked.

"Yeah!" The beautiful young girl answered, with a wicked grin, as she curled herself around his forearm.

The warrior shifted his arm, and taking a broader, bent knee stance, hoisted the small bender off of the ground. The blind girl was strong enough to curl herself around the young man's forearm and hold herself off the ground. He was strong enough to lift her completely off the ground. She hung laughing from his arm for a few seconds. Toph loved how strong Sokka was. She then reluctantly lowered her feet to the ground and stood up.

"You are such a brat." He told her smiling.

"And you're really strong, Mr. big bad water tribe guy." She replied in her best Ty Lee voice, holding his right hand with her left, while stroking his bicep with her free hand.

"No, you're just really light, Miss little and very bad earthbender girl." He told her, squeezing her hand.

The boy and girl walked hand in hand down to the road and continued on their way. After a minute or two the girl asked,

"What's this?" She swung his hand up to about chest level, and held it there.

"That's my… hand, Toph." The young man answered in a concerned voice.

The girl stopped walking and pulled the boy around to face her.

"No stupid." She said in an irritated voice, but Sokka could hear the little smile hiding behind the words. The Blind Bandit always got his jokes, she just didn't like to admit it.

"This!" She said grabbing his thumb with her free hand.

"That's my…" The boy began.

"Don't you dare!" The young girl cut him off, twisting his thumb to add emphasis to her threat.

"Ow… ow… It's a thumb ring." The tribesman told her, trying to move his hand away from her attack.

"Yeah! I figured that much out for myself." The earthbender said, twisting harder. "Where'd you get it?"

"That sergeant gave it… Ow!... OW!" The boy tried to explain.

"Sergeant Soggy Pants gave you a ring?" She asked, no longer pretending to be angry.

"OW! OW!" The boy cried out. "His name was Truong! He taught me archery!"

"Oh… him." Toph said letting go of Sokka's hand, and turning her head down and away from him.

"The style of archery he taught me was based on shooting from the saddle." The tribesman explained, massaging his thumb. "You draw the string with your thumb, so he gave me this ring so the bow string wouldn't cut my skin. It's also supposed to give you a cleaner release."

The warrior then stuck his thumb in his mouth and began to suck on it.

"So who's sergeant Soggy Pants?" The boy asked around his injured digit.

"I don't know." The girl said in a quiet voice. "Ahh… isn't it like a military nickname for sergeants, or something."

"I don't know, I've never heard that one before." The dark skinned teen answered, taking his thumb out of his mouth and wiping it on his sleeve.

"Sergeants… Oh yeah." The young man said. "I asked Minh what you two were fighting about, back at the restaurant but she just blew me off."

"She did what to you?" The blind girl asked.

"She wouldn't tell me." The boy explained. "She made a joke out of it, said the two of you were fighting over me, which is just ridiculous, as if two girls would fight over someone like me."

"Yeah that's just silly, like I would fight over something as stupid as you." Toph confirmed.

Apparently the young bender found something very interesting in the road just then, since she had turned away from the warrior and was scrapping her big toe over one of the flag stones.

"Yeah… Silly…" The tribesman agreed. "So what were you two arguing about?"

"Oh… ah…" Then Toph thought of the perfect answer. "Girl stuff."

Sokka was the bravest person she knew. He would take on the most powerful military force ever assembled nearly by himself. But he was terrified of anything that had to do with girls. She knew that she had just quashed any further inquiries into the causes of the fight between Sergeant Soggy Pants and herself.

"Oh… Ok" The boy said, blushing.

The fifteen year old held out his hand to the twelve year old, who took hold of it. Both the boy and the girl felt a little thrill run through them as their hands made contact, and both made the utmost attempt to hide it from the other. Hand in hand the two walked on down the road.

* * *

They made camp in the early evening near a small brook. Even though they set up the camp quickly it was dark by the time they had finished their cold supper. Sokka was just starting to undress for bed when he finally worked up the courage to bring up the blanket issue. He started in a rather roundabout way.

"A couple/three hours down the road there should be a valley with a small river running through it." The young man said pulling off his boots. "It should be about the same size as My Lot or maybe a little bigger."

"That will be nice." Toph commented, undressing.

"Yeah, I figured we could take the afternoon as a rest and resupply day. Get a hot meal, do a little shopping and that."

"Fresh food, that would be great." The girl agreed, pulling off her pants, leaving her in her under tunic and under shorts.

"Yeah, and we could get some warm clothes too." The southerner said, stripping down to his loin cloth. "'Cause it's getting colder, and will get even colder especially at night as we go higher into the hills. I mean it's pretty cold at night now."

"Yeah." The girl agreed, lying down on her sleeping mat.

"Yeah." The boy agreed. "We could get you a blanket too."

"Yeah…?" The earthbender agreed, but a note of curiosity was beginning to creep into her voice.

"But till then…" The tribesman started. "Ah… maybe… just for tonight… a… maybe…"

"What?" Toph asked sitting up, putting her hands on her hips.

"Nothing." The teen said, defensively. "But, I was just wondering… if we could… maybe… share the one blanket."

Toph thought about it. If she said no, she would be admitting that she was afraid to sleep under the same blanket with the gorgeous, magnificently muscled, totally touchable young man, which of course she wasn't. She knew that Sokka would never do anything to embarrass either of them. Not consciously of course. She was more concerned with her own reactions to being next to the nearly naked, so naked as to nearly make no difference, super ruggedly built, taught skinned, hard muscled, great smelling, tremendously tasty, extremely exciting, nearly naked, naked, nude, unclothed, all that gorgeous skin available for touching and licking and tasting and rubbing all over, young man.

With false but convincing unconcern she told him,

"Oh sure."

Toph pulled it off very well though her voice did sound a little breathless to her own ear.

"Ahhh Great! Thanks!" The swordsman told her.

In his excitement he grabbed her sleeping mat and pulled it onto his ground cloth/cloak so that she was lying next to him. Toph gave a little squeak as she felt herself moving.

_I don't squeak!_ She yelled at herself. _Ok, I'll be fine, I just have to bluff my way through this._ The young girl had a moment of incredibly vivid Déjà vu just then, as if this had all happened before, then she felt the young man's arm cross over her chest, and all thoughts left her mind, as her heart began trying to escape the paltry confines of her rib cage.

Sokka reached over the beautiful young girl, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it over both of them. He had thought it was going to be a lot harder to get Toph to agree to sharing the blanket than it had been. He knew she liked to roll herself up in it. He had no problems with sleeping in the same bed with someone else. He had spent most of his life sharing one bed with his entire family.

The water tribesman noticed that the earthbender next to him was lying very stiffly on her mat. He was afraid her injuries were flaring up again.

"You ok?" He asked her, spreading the blanket over the both of them.

"Totally!" The girl answered, her voice cracking a little.

"Do you want a cold compress for your face, or your stomach?" He asked.

"No!" She told him.

_Bluff! Bluff!_ She told herself.

"But you can kiss them and make them all better if you want." Toph told him, using as much sarcasm as she could muster under her current conditions.

"You bet!" The boy told her, still excited by his success.

Sokka rolled onto his side and kissed her cheek, it was a real kiss this time, not an exaggerated one like before. Toph's breath caught in her throat, the air was unable to get past her heart which had decided to attempt to exit her body through her mouth.

"All better!" He said, smiling.

The young man's head then disappeared under the blanket. Toph who had stopped using her bending to sense her surroundings about the time her heart had stopped beating, felt the fifteen year old, incredibly gorgeous boy, double up under the blanket. Then she felt something touch her stomach near where her injury was, The contact was blocked by her shorts, but she felt it all the same. From under the blanket she heard a muffled,

"All better there too."

The warrior's head reappeared out of the blanket.

"Oh this is great!" The boy said, while scrunggling up against the girl. "I feel warmer already. Oh almost forgot."

The teen then rolled up onto his side, throwing his arm over the beautiful girl beside him, and planting his hand by her shoulder, hoisted himself over her, and lowered his face to hers. He was so excited he did not notice the wide staring eyes, the blank expression on the face, and the total lack of physical reaction as he rubbed his nose against hers, in short he missed all the obvious signs of shock his friend was exhibiting.

He rolled onto his back, and scrunggled up against her again.

"'Night Toph." He told her.

It took a while before he heard a very quiet, very breathy,

"'Night Snoozles."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Warning! Warning! Major Fluff Alert! This is not a drill. This is an actual Tokka Fluff Alert! Take all necessary precautions to prevent emotional and physical injury.

Well I am going to apologize because this is really late, and I have no good excuse.

Lots of Tokka fluff in this one, and no shenanigans, and I promised you shenanigans, sorry about that too. Next time there will be shenanigans, honest. Hope you enjoyed the chapter. I am moving them on in their relationship so I hope that is working as well. Don't worry the angst is far from over in this story.

xxxx

To all of the reviewers, once again thank you so much. Your words mean a huge amount to me, and to the story. So to all of you, thanks again.

I try to reply personally to all the reviews. If I missed any one, please forgive me.

To;

x

Warknyte: Yes admitting that she is glad he is her friend is the first step, let's hope it is the first of many. Thanks for the review.

x

Shadow: Thanks you so much, Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up, I hope it was worth the wait.

x

Sange: Thank you so much, what a wonderful and detailed review. I love long reviews (Blush) so don't worry about taking up my time.

I am glad to hear that about Minh especially from you. I'm an old guy so I am pretty much flying blind here when I am writing women characters.

In answer to your question, well I have to leave some mystery for the young man, though he does were a leg brace most of the time on his left leg.

X

Landywinterfic: Thank you so much. Not so much circling in this chapter, I just hope I didn't have them dive down the drain ^_^. Maybe only one step back this time. Thanks again.

X

Saxsui: Thanks for the support, especially with the busy schedule. I hope the paper went well.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thanks again to Vox Populi for all his help, and his dedications on his story "The Epic of Tokka" I really appreciate the honor. He has finished that story, but has many more going now, so take a look.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	29. Chapter 29

I'll Walk You Home pt 29

Chapter 10

pt. 1

Distractions and Diversions

* * *

Sokka was up early the next day. He felt great. He hadn't slept that well in a long time. He did not know why he felt so good, he just did. He practiced with his throwing knives and darts, and then just because he felt so good he added some sword drills in for fun, working on his fine blade control. He washed up and came back to camp, dressed and got some breakfast together for the two of them.

Toph slept in. The young bender had not gotten much sleep last night, and was a little grumpy. It was all the tribesman's fault. He just had too much skin. _It's just everywhere. _The girl thought. _He's just covered with it._ She kept making contact with it all through the night. The tent dream had come back to her as well, and had mixed with the reality of sharing a bed with the gorgeous young man, making for a very long, strange, sleepless night.

The young man got them on the road finally, and within a couple of hours they crested a rise and saw a wide mountain valley before them, complete with a small river, farms, and a small town at the mouth of the valley.

"Let's take a break." The swordsman suggested.

The young earthbender didn't reply, she simply yawned, walked to the side of the road, lay down, and was asleep in seconds. The boy stripped off his gear, covered her in the blanket, and sat down next to her with his back against a tree enjoying the morning.

Sokka reached under his top and pulled the cloth away from his chest. The straps from his gear had irritated his nipples, which for some reason had been somewhat tender this morning. He assumed it was due to the rough wool blanket last night.

The tribesman examined the valley and the town from his vantage point on the high ground. The farm fields were just stubble, which surprised the young man. He thought farms grew food all year round, and did not understand about crops ripening and being harvested.

The town from what he could see was very colorful. _They must be having a festival._ The boy thought. Even from this distance he could see banners and flags all over the streets and houses below.

The young man looked to his companion sleeping next to him by the road side. Toph had been yawning all morning and he decided to let her sleep until she woke up on her own. He pulled out his "writing desk" and began working on his letters. The town looked large enough to have a post office where he could mail them out.

Once the swordsman had finished with the letters he pulled out his note book. He wanted to make a shopping list. He found a blank page and using his charcoal pen wrote _Food_ then below that he wrote _Blanket_. He sighed after that. Last night had been good. Sharing a bed with his friend had felt really good. It had been warm and comfortable and it had reminded him of home. Best of all he knew that Toph was safe right there next to him. He could protect her. Once he got the small earthbender her own blanket he would not have an excuse for sharing his bed with her. But from her constant yawning and grumpy behavior this morning, it was obvious to the young man that his friend had not been comfortable in bed with him. He scratched out the word _food_ and wrote it again under the word_ blanket. _Getting Toph her own blanket would have to be his first priority now.

The tribesman then leafed through the book looking for any notes he may have made on items he needed and should get if possible. He added _ink block_ to his list along with _parchment_ and _sealing wax_. As he was leafing through the book he came upon the sketch he had made of Toph back at the small restaurant they had eaten lunch in before starting out across the desert.

The boy studied the sketch for a few minutes. That seemed so long ago, but it had only been about two weeks, but it seemed like years ago. He turned and watched the young girl as she slept beside him. After a while he forgot about his shopping list and turned to a fresh page and began a new sketch.

* * *

After a couple of hours Toph woke up. At first she just lay there under the blanket feeling the warmth of the day and the coolness of the earth under her. The nap had been wonderful, and she felt much better now. She rolled onto her stomach, pressed her hands onto the earth and sent out her bending. She felt a small twinge in her stomach when she did it. She felt Sokka sitting next to her, working in his note book.

"Awake?" The young man asked quietly.

"Yeah." She answered after a moment. "How'd you know?"

"Bending." He answered.

The young girl felt one of the boy's strong hands begin to stroke her back. All thoughts of getting up fled her mind. All she wanted to do now was arch her back and purr. After a few scratches Sokka put down his book, threw his leg over the small bender, straddling her hips, and brought both of his hands to bear on her back, rubbing and massaging her through the blanket. Toph dissolved.

The tribesman ended with long light scratching strokes up and down her back as he sat back on her upper thighs.

"You ok?" He asked her.

"Good." She mumbled.

"Well we should probably be on our way then." The boy told her, but he made no move to leave her.

"Yeah…" The girl sighed, but she made no move to dislodge the warrior.

The two of them stayed that way for almost a minute before the young man finally sighed,

"Yeah…"

Sokka stood up smoothly and stepped away from Toph moving over to his gear. The young girl finally pushed herself up into a sitting position, stretching out her arms and arching her back. She pulled off the blanket and stood up.

"Just a second." The swordsman said approaching her. "You've got leaves in your hair."

The young bender felt the handsome young man's hands move through her hair for a time then she felt his strong hands gently smooth her hair down. Blood rushed to her face and she turned her head down and away from the young man.

"That's better." The boy told her as he dropped his hands.

Sokka took the blanket from Toph, rolled it up and tied it to his pack. He had a little trouble since his hands were still tingling from his contact with the young girl. _I have to stop doing that!_ He told himself. _She probably can't stand me constantly pawing her, but it just feels so good to touch her, I can't stop myself._ He thought about writing himself a note _Don't Touch Toph!_ But thought that might not be such a good idea. He would just have to remind himself every time he was tempted that she didn't even like him, and was just too nice to push him away.

The young bender stood there and felt a little warm shiver run through her. _What heaven!_ She thought. _To wake up every morning and have Sokka give me a back rub._ Her heart gave a jump in her chest, and the blush that had been fading suddenly sprang back up into her face as she felt her lips spread into a wide grin. She brushed down her clothes turning away from the young man to hide her flushed features.

Soon enough they were back on the ancient Roaming Road, heading down hill towards the town.

* * *

"It looks like there is a festival going on in the town." Sokka said after a time.

"Yeah?" Toph responded.

"There should be good shopping." The boy stated.

"And good food." The girl observed.

"And we can get you a blanket." The boy added.

"Oh… yeah…" The girl replied.

_Crap!_ Toph thought. She had hoped that Sokka had forgotten about getting a blanket for her. She much preferred sharing one with Meathead even if it meant she hardly got any sleep at night, what with all that skin, which was all over him. He was just so distracting. _Distracting!_ That would work. Anytime he started looking at blankets she would distract him. That way they would be stuck with the one blanket and the two of them would have to share. The side of the young girl's mouth turned up into a wicked little smile.

* * *

After about an hour the two travelers could smell the delicious aroma of cooking and Sokka could see the start of tents and carts lining the road going into the town. It was about mid morning and the lines to buy food were still short. The couple followed their noses to an area that had half a dozen different food stalls set up. A few were in tents but most were set up out of shacks that had been built onto carts.

The two of them walked up and down the line of eateries Sokka reading the menus to Toph as they passed each one. After they discussed what each wanted the young man came up with the plan of action.

"Ok, so you're standing in the line for the tea and the Chow Fun and Lo Mein. " The tribesman said pointing. "I'll go over there and get the Dim Sum then get in line for the steamed buns while you snag a table over there."

"Got it." The girl affirmed.

The small earthbender joined the end of her assigned line and dug her money out. The swordsman had told her what the prices were. When she finally got to the counter she told the person her order and held out her coins. The cook shack was made of wood and was built onto a wooden cart so she was unable to feel the person behind the counter, but from the voice she could tell it was a young woman. The girl behind the counter seemed to be distracted by something since Toph had to give her the order twice before she got a response.

Toph got her order and her change and using her bending, even though it caused more twinges below her belt, she began feeling for an empty table near where Sokka had indicated. She eventually found one, and started for it. It took all of the young girl's concentration to balance the two dishes and the two teacups while trying to sort through all the people and find the empty table, so it was no wonder that as she approached the table she was surprised by the voice of a young man that had come up behind her asking,

"You ok? Can I help you?"

Toph nearly dropped her precious load of steaming goodness at the sound of the voice of the stranger. She felt one of the plates begin to slip off of her arm and began to shift her whole body in an attempt to catch it, when she felt it lifted away, the second plate then disappeared from her other arm.

"I've got these." The stranger said, leaving her holding the two cups of tea.

"Here you go." The young man said putting the plates down on the small table made of rough wood.

The blind girl sent out her bending to get a "look" at the stranger. He was a husky broad shouldered young man about Sokka's age or a little older in rough simple clothes. He smelled of the earth, not like an earthbender more like one of the gardeners back on the Be Fong Estate.

"Thanks." The young girl said with ill grace. She did not like unasked for help.

The metalbender sent out another wave of bending to locate her companion. She found Sokka waiting in line for the steamed buns holding a number of platters balanced up his left arm.

Toph set the two cups down and sat on one of the small benches by the table. She moved her hand under the table to rub the bruise on her stomach. All the bending she had been using had caused it to start to throb again. The stranger was still standing there.

"What? Do you want a tip or something?" She asked him.

"What…?" The boy answered in a confused voice.

"Is there something you want?" The girl asked, letting a little more irritation enter her voice.

"No!" The boy said defensively.

The strange young man stood for a moment then squared his shoulders and sat down on the bench opposite to the young girl.

"Listen." He said, looking earnestly over the table at the blind girl. "I know he says he loves you, but don't believe him."

Toph who had been taking a sip at the time sprayed the serious young man with hot tea.

The blind girl was about to respond when she was distracted by a young woman's voice calling out,

"Huzzah for the tipper!"

And the ringing of a bell from farther down the line of eateries. The broad shouldered boy sitting across from her wiped his face with his hand and took the opportunity to tell her,

"Oh sure he says he's sorry and it will never happen again, and that he loves you, and that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you, but he's lying, he's just using you. You should leave him! You should walk away right now and never look back! Don't worry I'll protect you!"

The blind earthbender wiped the tea off of her own chin. She only hoped that she had not ruined the Lo Mein in front of her. _What the fuck!_ She thought.

"What the fuck!" She said to the stranger.

"I know he's used his magic on you." The farm boy went on. "I know all about Wet Kisses and Water Tribe Magic. But you can fight it. You can free yourself. I can help you."

The husky teen reached across the table and took the earth kingdom girl's hands. Toph, because of the wooden table only became aware of his action when she felt his rough hands on hers. She immediately try to pull her hands away but the broad shouldered boy's grip was very strong and she was unable to free herself.

"Together we can do this. We can free you from him!" The boy told her, painfully squeezing her hands.

"Mind if I join you two?" Sokka asked, walking up and placing two paper wrapped Cha Siu Bao on the table. "I'm not sure if we have enough for three though."

The husky young man released the girl, and jumped up, knocking the bench he was sitting on over. He took a fighting stance directed towards the tribesman. The swordsman, still carrying four platters of Dim Sum took a step back shifting the food away from this odd and violent stranger.

"I'm not afraid of you." The farm boy said, his voice quaking slightly with fear.

"Well, that's nice to know." Sokka replied sardonically, then he asked his companion, "You ok?"

"Don't talk to her!" The husky teen cut the blind girl off before she could answer. "She's free of you now! She's coming to stay with me and my family. We'll protect her from your magic and spells, your beatings and your… your… "

The boy didn't finish the sentence, but his gestures towards Sokka's groin and the tone in his voice indicated how low and horrible the Water Tribesman's "whatever" was.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Toph, still sitting at the table, asked the stranger.

"That's my question." The blue eyed warrior said.

"Me?" The farm boy asked. "It's him! This Wet has…"

"That's it!" Sokka cut the other teen off.

The warrior stepped up to the table and began to bang the platters of food down on to it. The husky teen stepped back and tripped on the overturned bench. He only just managed to regain his aggressive stance after much stumbling and arm swinging. The Water Tribesman then turned to the other boy, and slipping his hands under the straps of his gear shot his arms up and out dropping his pack and shoulder bags and water skin onto the ground.

"That is it!" The blue eyed teen told the broad shouldered boy in front of him. "I have had it with all you assholes and this whole 'Wet' shit!"

"Me too!" Toph said putting her foot down.

The earth pillar shot up out of the ground launching the farm boy into the air. A moment later he landed in a painful heap about twenty strides up the road.

"Good one, Toph!" Sokka said admiringly.

"Thanks." The young earthbender said in a strained voice.

The tribesman immediately came over to his friend, and putting a hand on her shoulder asked,

"You ok?"

"I'm fine." She told him in a more relaxed tone. "It's just whenever I bend that bruise on my stomach acts up."

"Sorry." The young man told her. "Let me kick the next guy's butt."

"Naaa!" The girl replied with a smile. "It's too much fun doing it myself. Come on let's eat before the food gets cold."

"Hey being a friend means you have to share." He told her righting the bench and sitting down at the table.

"I'll gladly share the bad stuff, but I am keeping all the good stuff like butt whipping." She told him with a laugh.

"You are such a brat." He replied, handing her a plate of dim sum.

The young stranger got up and limped away as fast as he could, and the small crowd that had gathered to watch the altercation began to break up and wander through the fair.

The young couple shared the various dishes with great gusto. It was really nice to be eating something other than dried meat and hard crackers. Though Toph thought the smell and taste did not compare to fresh cooked rabaroo over an open fire.

"Yuua fash!" Sokka said, pointing to his companion with his chop sticks.

"What?" Toph asked.

The young man had spoken with a mouthful of food and she was not sure what he had actually said. The boy swallowed and began again,

"Your face!"

"What? Have I got something on me?" The girl asked.

"No you're just as beautiful as ever." The boy told her, smiling. "But you still have what's left of that bruise, now nice and yellow for the most part so it goes with your green eyes."

The fifteen year old reached out and gently stroked the side of her face with the back of one finger. The young girl dropped her head down to hid the blush she felt come to her cheeks.

"Sorry." The boy told her.

"No it's ok." The girl replied. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

They were quiet for a moment, the boy looking at the girl's face, the girl feeling both warm and awkward at the same time.

"Anyway." The teen finally broke the silence, lowering his head. "Asshole must have thought I had hit you or something. He probably had good intentions but was just a jerk about it."

"Maybe." The girl replied. "But what was all that stuff about magic and spells?"

"Beats me." The boy answered, taking another mouthful of food.

"It seems like you get six paces outside the city walls and everyone you meet is an idiot or an asshole, or both." The twelve year old observed, shoveling noodles into her mouth.

"Not everyone." The boy said around his egg role, remembering Chung and Liung and all the others that had helped with the tunnel at the serpent's pass, and Minh and lieutenant Ho and the troopers that had helped the two of them.

"No not everyone." The girl agreed.

The young couple finished their meal smiling and joking with one another. But Sokka kept an eye out, and Toph kept a toe or two tapping the earth, making sure that if the strange young man returned with some friends they would be ready for them.

xxx

While they were returning the cups, plates, and dishes to the various stalls Sokka noticed that up the road from the beginning of the fair a squad of cavalry rode up. With them was the husky teen who then spoke to the squad leader and pointed towards the couple. He told Toph what he had seen and the two stood waiting for a minute. Sokka saw the corporal point to one of the troopers who rode away at the gallop, but other than that the squad stayed up the road from them. The two young people shrugged their shoulders and walked hand in hand down into the main part of the festival.

After the line of food stalls came the area set aside for the jewelry makers. Toph was not very interested until they found a small shop that used polished stones in silver settings. Sokka waited patiently as she checked out the wares of the stall. He also kept an eye on the soldiers who had entered the fair and were strung out in a long line along the ancient road.

Although the blind bender found some interesting items she decided not to buy any. She was not very fond of jewelry.

Next down the road was the area for the weapons shops, and it was Toph's turn to be patient. Most of the shops sold poor quality weapons for ridiculous prices, or ridiculous weapons for ridiculous prices, and Sokka passed them by with only a short look around. The swordsman's heart did skip a beat when he saw in one shop, amongst all the silly, over sized and weird blades, one sword with a black blade. On closer examination he could see that although the card attached to it read "Space Sword", the weapon itself was a cheap copy of the true Space Sword, blackened by quenching it in oil while the metal was still hot.

Towards the end of the row he did find two stalls that made him stop and look over each and every item with care.

The first shop contained swords and daggers of beautiful craftsmanship and although of very high quality they were more works of art than weapons.

The second shop's wares although not as beautiful had the look and feel of weapons. Sokka especially liked a cable welded dagger that was on display. The man behind the counter of the stall was the actual blade smith, whose name was Bjorn. He and the water tribe warrior got into a long conversation about blade smithing, and steel, and tempering which caused Toph to yawn and idly feel the crowd move through the fair.

"May I see the sword you carry?" Bjorn asked.

"It's not mine." The blue eyed teen answered, pulling the sword out of its scabbard and handing it to the blade smith. "It's on loan from my master"

"Beautiful!" The smith whispered, as he examined it. "You'll not find better here or anywhere for that matter. This is the work of Master Piandao of the Fire Nation. He is your Sifu? I had heard he no longer took students."

"Well luckily he accepted me." The teen responded.

"He's done more than accept you, if he has loaned you this." The craftsman said, as he handed the sword back to the young warrior.

As Sokka re-sheathed Spring Rain the blade smith went on,

"All smiths use the four elements in their craft. Earth in the metal we work and the coal we burn, fire in the forge, air in the bellows, and water in the quenching. But it is told that towards the end of the war Piandao made a sword unlike any other. He added a fifth and a sixth element, metal from a falling star, and water tribe magic. He made it for, and with the help of a great warrior of the water tribes. It's said that it is as black as the deepest part of the sea, and that it was the greatest sword ever made. I'm not talking about that piece of junk down there." He pointed towards the shop with the imitation Space Sword on display. "But it was lost in the war during a great battle in the sky. Or at least that is what the stories say."

"I've heard that story too." Sokka told the smith. "Maybe someday it will return and you will see it yourself."

"That would be something I would like to see before I die" The smith answered. "But it's probably just a story like so many others."

"Probably." The boy agreed.

"Sokka!" Toph called out. "I think we may have company."

The young warrior looked towards his companion then turned back and bowed to the weapons artist, before leaving the stall and joining the young earthbender on the road. She pointed up the road from the way the couple had come. A cavalry first sergeant, from what Sokka could see of the uniform, was riding down the road at a trot, followed by the trooper who had ridden away earlier. The sergeant pulled up beside the squad leader, they had a short conversation, then the two cavalry men dismounted and leading their Ostrich/horses walked towards the two travelers.

"This time you're the Jet." The blind girl whispered to her friend.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." The boy said out of the side of his mouth. "And if it does your Jet is still better than mine."

Toph made a rude noise in answer.

The couple waited, the warrior's hands folded together on his chest his arms slung through the straps of all his gear, the earthbender's toes digging into the stones of the ancient road.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Sorry short chapter.

Well I am going to apologize because this is really, really, really late, and I have no good excuse, except to say that life and work have been very crazy lately. I will try to get back to weekly updates but can't guarantee anything during this time of year.

Just to let everyone know I will never abandon this story, I know how I want it to end and will finish it no matter what, even if I am the only one still reading it at that point, though I do apologize again for taking so long to update.

Not much in the way of shenanigans, sorry about that as well. Hey, it's me, it always takes me longer to get to the point then it should. There should be only two more chapters of Toph and Sokka playing at the fair.

I also have to apologize to all the reviewers I have not answered. My only excuse is that what time I've had has gone into the chapter, and I hope that the update is good enough for you to forgive me.

** I do want to thank Vanill for translating my story into German, that is a great honor, and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.**

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	30. Chapter 30

I'll Walk You Home pt 30

Chapter 10

pt. 2

Distractions and Diversions

* * *

The two cavalry non-coms, short men with heavy shoulders and arms, carrying broad bladed sabers slung across their backs, approached the young couple, leading their mounts, and stopped a sword's length away from the young tribesman and the small bender. The troopers nodded to Sokka, who returned the greeting in kind. They bowed formally to Toph, who bowed less politely in reply. The four stood awkwardly sizing each other up for a moment.

"This is corporal Gok." The older man on Sokka's left said. "And I am First Sergeant Lee of Armadillo/Duck Company, First Battalion, of the Four Hundred and Forty Second Cavalry. We have received a report of a young couple who would be traveling through our district."

With this last the sergeant reached into a dispatch case that was slung from a strap across his chest and was hanging on his right hip. He pulled out a rolled piece of paper and handed it to the corporal.

"The report told of a young water tribesman, and a small earth kingdom girl." The cavalryman went on. "They are described as follows."

The older man turned to the corporal who had unrolled the paper. The sergeant pointed to a section near the top and nodded his head. The soldier cleared his throat and began to read in an official sounding voice,

"Sokka, the water tribe warrior, is heavily armed and dangerous. A master of many weapons but especially skilled with the sword, I am sure he has few equals in the world with that particular weapon. He is very intelligent and clever, an unusual and dangerous combination. He is tall and lean but don't let that fool you, he is very powerful. Brown hair normally tied up into a high 'Warrior's Wolf Tail' unless he intends to ensnare the eyes of every woman around him, in which case he will have it down and loose. He is heartbreakingly handsome, with the beautiful brown skin of his people, and eyes so dark blue that they are like a deep mountain lake. They seem open and invite you to throw yourself into them and you cannot resist but to dive in, even though you know you will never be able to plumb their deepest depths, and you also know you will never be able to climb out once you enter."

"It goes on like that for a while." The First Sergeant interrupted with a small cough. "Corporal you can skip down to the description of the girl."

The First Sergeant indicated a paragraph about two thirds of the way down the report. The corporal found the spot and clearing his throat began to read again.

"Toph, the Earth Kingdom girl is young, short, and plain. Black hair with long bangs and a long pony tail down her back. She has dull green eyes, but don't let her vacant expression fool you. She is clever and moderately intelligent…"

As he heard this last Sokka could have sworn that he began to feel the earth tremble beneath his feet, but the two soldiers didn't seem to notice, since the corporal continued to read.

"… But don't let her looks fool you. She is the most powerful and skilled earthbender I have ever encountered, and she is extremely dangerous…"

The tribesman saw a little smile grace his companion's lips at that.

"… She is eccentric and insists on being addressed as 'Princess' on all occasions."

Sokka saw the smile turn into a dark frown.

"The Princess treats the warrior as a minor servant most of the time, but be warned they are insanely loyal to each other. Do not come between them, because if you do, they will become lethal forces of nature, the Princess with unimaginable power, and the warrior with terrifyingly cold calculation matched only by his reckless courage and unrivaled skill."

The two soldiers darted a look to each other then the corporal returned to the paper in his hand, and the sergeant gave the young couple an appraising look. Sokka tried to look as innocent as possible, while Toph just grinned. _A lethal force of nature with unimaginable power! _The young bender liked the sound of that.

"Should I skip over this confidential section?" The corporal asked his superior.

"Yes, just read the last section please Gok." The First Sergeant told him.

"The Princess is a high born rich…" The corporal stopped for a second, he seemed to be having a problem reading the word written on the paper, but then went on, "… young lady. She is the daughter of Grand Duke Lao Bei Fong of Goaling, as well as being the Avatar's earthbending teacher and a hero of the late war. The water tribe warrior as well as being a traveling companion to the Avatar, was, through his stratagem and intervention, responsible for saving Ba Sing Se and the entire Kingdom from destruction by the Fire Nation in the late war."

The soldier looked up from the report for a moment shooting an admiring glance at the young couple before him.

"Extend to them every courtesy." The soldier continued. "And provide all the assistance they may require in their journey. It is paramount that you insure their safe and pleasant passage through your district. Signed, Minh, First Sergeant, Acting Executive Officer, Badger/Mole Company, First Battalion, Four Hundred and Forty Second Cavalry. Endorsed, with a note, by Ho, First Lieutenant, Acting Commanding Officer for the My Lot Military District. The note reads 'Try to keep them out of any nice restaurants you might have in your area'."

The corporal rolled up the paper and handed it back to the sergeant, who returned it to the dispatch case hanging at his side.

"We received this by hawk five days ago." Sergeant Lee told the couple. "I regret that we were unable to make contact with you before this. With the Harvest Festival going on the company is stretched rather thin at the moment, and we have had to end our patrols to the more secure south."

"Perfectly understandable." The blued eyed warrior responded, doing his best to sound understanding.

"From what Gok has told me." Lee went on. "It would appear we have been a little late and you have already had some trouble with one of the locals."

"It was no trouble." Toph told him with a grin.

"We have set aside a room for you in our VIP quarters." The First Sergeant explained. "Unfortunately with the festival we are a little crowded with VIPs at the moment, or you could have the run of the house." The company sergeant told them apologetically. Then he finished with, "Corporal Gok's squad will act as an escort for you while you are in our area of control."

"Thank you!" The tribesman replied. "But…" Sokka thought for a moment then went on, "Her Highness is traveling incognito, it is the only way she can truly assess the situation in the Kingdom, and if she is surrounded by troops… Well you can imagine how little of the true feelings of the Kingdom's subjects and the realities of the current post war conditions she will be able to glean."

The young earthbender gave her friend a questioning look after his little speech. She then nodded her head in agreement.

Sergeant Lee also nodded.

"I thought you might feel that way." He told the couple. "So if you would please accept these."

With that the First Sergeant pulled two whistles out of his dispatch case. They each were hanging from a lanyard. He handed them to the young man.

"You can wear these under your clothes." Lee told them. "And at the first sign of trouble you can signal any trooper in the area to come to your assistance, not that you would need any, but we would prefer to handle any difficulties you might encounter in our district by ourselves."

"Of course." The young warrior said, slinging one whistle around his neck, and handing the second to his friend. The two of them pushed the instruments down out of sight into their robes.

"If you would like." Corporal Gok chimed in. "We would be happy to take your packs so you could enjoy the fair unencumbered."

The soldier saw the hesitation in the young warrior's eyes and quickly added,

"Don't worry, they will be under guard, and besides no one would dare risk touching anything belonging to the Blind Princess and the Blaooof…"

"The guests…" The sergeant cut the corporal off, elbowing him in the side. "Of Armadillo/Duck Company!"

Lee gave Sokka what the First Sergeant hoped was a winning smile as he bowed to the warrior.

The tribesman looked to his companion who shrugged in answer to the unasked question.

"Thank you." The fifteen year old finally said, bowing in return.

The young man pulled off his back pack and shoulder bags. He kept his green shoulder bag that contained some personal items, and all his weapons, with the exception of his bow and quiver of arrows which were lashed to his rucksack. The rest, along with Toph's gear, he handed over to the corporal who called two of his troopers. The mounted soldiers took both the boy's and the girl's gear, and hoisted them up onto the fronts of their saddles.

The tribesman had to admit that it was nice not to have to haul all his gear around with him, but it did mean he would have to report to the Company HQ to get all of their possessions back in the morning before they would be able to start on the road again.

It took another ten minutes of bows, awkward pauses, and ingratiating offers responded to with conditional acceptances, or polite refusals before the mismatched couple was free to proceed into the fair. Sokka was sure that corporal Gok and his squad would never be far away at any point of the day, unless the two of them could somehow give the soldiers the slip.

The young warrior would have liked to have had a look at that report, especially the confidential section, and he was very curious about what the corporal was going to say before the sergeant had stopped him. But he did not see any way of getting answers to his questions right now. He bowed one last time to the two non-coms who bowed in reply and returned to their troops.

The teen accepted the young girl's hand, and the two turned to continue down into the festival. The swordsman noticed that the weapons smith had come out of his stall and was standing by the side of the road. The swordsman nodded to the smith as he passed him. Bjorn, in reply bowed to the couple, while giving them both, what to Sokka at least seemed to be an odd look.

* * *

The next section of the fair was comprised of clothing makers and sellers, housed in large open sided tents. Toph was exceedingly bored, but Sokka enjoyed looking at the different styles of clothes from all over the Earth Kingdom.

The young man went into one shop that had knitted goods and found a scarf he liked. It was long, well made, of wool with longitudinal stripes of black and dark grey. He found a similar scarf for Toph. It had broad horizontal stripes of alternating green and gold. He thought she looked adorable in it, which of course he would never tell her, since she would never wear it if she knew.

The shop keeper, her helper, and the other shoppers kept giving the two of them odd looks. Sympathy for the young girl, and barely suppressed disdain for the young man. It took awhile before the tribesman figured out what was going on. But when he looked at Toph in her scarf he noticed the fading bruise on her face. He had gotten used to it and it barely registered on his consciousness any more, then he remembered the young farmer and it struck him what everybody was thinking.

"It wasn't me!" The fifteen year old said in a loud voice. "It was a fair fight and you should see the other girl."

This announcement was followed by a shocked silence in the tent, and earned him a surprised, curious look from the young bender, which turned into understanding.

"Yeah! I kicked her butt!" Toph announced.

There was quite a lot of quiet chatter and a number of odd stolen looks at the couple after that, but the owner and the helper were no longer giving Sokka the fish eye.

The tribesman paid for the two scarfs which were bundled up with some string, and the young couple left the tent. Once outside the swordsman saw corporal Gok walking up. He nodded to the soldier who bowed in return and then offered,

"I will be happy to take any purchases you and the Princess have made and have them stored with your other impedimenta."

The young swordsman thought a moment then handed the small bundle over to the soldier.

"Thank you." The teen told the trooper. "That is very thoughtful of you."

"Not at all." The corporal replied. "You are our guests."

The older man bowed again then returned to his squad handing the purchases over to a mounted trooper. Sokka made a note in his idea book. He would have to watch himself. It was very convenient not to have to carry packages while shopping, but it would be very easy to loose track of just how much you had bought if you didn't have to carry everything around with you, and you might end up getting a lot more than you normally would. It might increase sales if a large store instituted such a policy. After finishing his note the boy took the girl's hand and the young couple continued down into the fair.

They stopped in a number of other clothing tents as the young man looked around. He decided against giving an announcement each time but would somehow remark to the proprietor or one of the assistants that his young companion had been in a fight a week or so ago and had won. That kept the looks and the comments down to a minimum.

Toph was becoming very bored by all the shopping for things she was not interested in and focused her bending on the crowd as it grew through the day. This caused the bruise on her stomach to ache most of the time but the pain was worth it. It was better than being blind while Meathead looked at clothes.

One shop that caught the tribesman's attention had clothing from the far west of the Earth Kingdom. He especially liked the long coats that were for sale. He could not find one in blue but he did find a black one that fit him well.

The coats were of heavy oiled cotton that would resist wind and rain. The skirts reached down to his ankles and it had a shoulder cape built into it for protection agains the rain. Inside the skirt were straps and buttons so it could be attached to the wearers legs. Apparently the Ostrich/horse people of the steppes who wore them would strap them on so they could be worn while riding.

Sokka bought two. The black one for himself and, after a lot of dirty looks and snide comments from his friend, while he had her try on a few to get one that fit her, a tan one for Toph. He also bought two wide brimmed felt hats that would keep both the sun and the rain off and that matched the coats in color. The day was warm, and even though he thought they both looked really good and rugged in their new coats and hats, he decided not to wear them and had them bundled up.

As they exited the shop Corporal Gok was waiting and graciously accepted the bundles to be added to the rest of the young couples gear at the company HQ.

At a leather shop Sokka bought a heavy black leather belt that he could hang his weapons from. It would be much more convenient than sticking them in his sash, he could now drop them in one group and leave them attached to the new belt.

Gok was waiting for them again but the young swordsman decided to wear his new purchase festooned with all his weapons.

Sokka was happy, he had spent a lot of money so far, but he had liked everything he had bought and checking out all the shops had been fun. Toph was tired and grumpy. Her stomach was aching and clothes just didn't interest her, and that coat and hat Meathead had made her try on, she was sure, looked a little silly on her, even though her friend had sworn that they made her look very fierce and dangerous.

The last tent they went into before entering the town proper was not very interesting until the tribesman saw a small section in the back that had a sign painted on a piece of cloth stating,

"The latest fashion from Ba Sing Se! The Water Tribe Look!"

The young man read the sign to his sightless companion and then told her,

"I have to check this out."

"Oh joy." She replied rolling her cloudy green eyes.

The fifteen year old saw the back of a very attractive teen/twenty-ish young woman arranging some of the "Water Tribe Fashions" on some hangers. Her skin,which was amply reveled by the top she was wearing, was a light tan but it struck the young man as being a little uneven in tone. She had on women's low cut boots that looked liked his sister's, but that was where the similarity to Katara ended. The young sales woman was wearing a boy's outfit, and from the way it fit her she had gotten it off of a very small boy.

To say the leggings were skin tight would be a complete understatement. No one's skin could ever be that tight. The color was much too dark, almost black. The top was much too light in color and far too tight and impossibly short, ending just below the shop girl's waist. It was sleeveless with the long side openings, and it was very obvious that she was not wearing any of the arm or body wraps normally worn by a tribesman. As far as the teenager could tell, and from the cut of her clothes he could tell quite a lot, she was not wearing anything under her clothing. Her black hair was plaited in a long braid down her back but she did not have the traditional hair loops.

"Isn't that your outfit from the restaurant?" Toph asked. "So that's what happened to our packs."

"My second outfit isn't that bad." The young man told her.

_At least I hope it wasn't that bad_. The young man told himself, but he still felt the blood start to rush to his face.

The young woman turned at the sound of the voices and bowed to her new customers. The bias of her robe was open down to her waist and Sokka's eyes confirmed that there was nothing under the top, at least nothing made of cloth, before they shot up to look at the ceiling of the tent.

"Oh wow!" The attractive young woman said as she straightened up from her bow to the couple. "That's a really good job!"

The green eyed sales woman rushed up to Sokka and began to touch his clothes.

"The colors are wrong but that's a good try." The sales girl told him. "The leather belt is totally wrong and the sword is too but the club is great."

The young woman began to walk around the tribesman. As she spoke she would touch or pull on his clothes.

"The tunic is too long, and since you have a nice butt you could get away with the right length. The hair in the pony tail is a nice touch." She came around to stand in front of him pulling open his robe, and running her hand over his chest. "The skin color is too dark but you got a nice even coating. What did you use? I used wet tea leaves but it came out all blotchy. You should open your tunic up to show it off it's such a good job. And the distressing on the clothing is excellent. It looks like you've been wearing it for months."

"Ahhh... Thanks." The embarrassed young man told her, as he pushed her hand away and closed his robe.

_What is with these Earth Kingdom women?_ _Why are they always touching me? _He asked himself.

"What's wrong with his skin?" Toph asked, a little worried.

"No his skin is fine, just a little dark is all." The sales woman told her. "All he needs are blue eyes and he would have a pretty good impression."

The young woman looked up into the teenagers face and their eyes locked.

Sokka was becoming more and more embarrassed by the second. The combination of the familiar Water Tribe look to the young woman and the exotic nature of her actual face and the cut of her clothing he found rather exciting. He kept having visions of Toph wearing those tight leggings with the blind benders perfect butt reveled by the short tunic. The fifteen year old tribesman felt a stirring in his loin cloth at the image in his mind and that was just so wrong for so many reasons that he used all his will power to push the image of his younger companion looking beautiful, and very sexy in the reveling "Water Tribe" outfit out of his mind and focus on the face of the woman in front of him.

Toph was sick of this. Meathead was such an idiot. She could tell by his heart beat and his posture that he was becoming embarrassed by the young woman's attention. And the blind girl was becoming very angry and truth be told jealous of the young woman. These women were always all over him when she had to force herself to just hold his hand. She couldn't bring herself to touch him unless he was asleep, or unless she was baked on cactus juice. _Wait! When was I on cactus juice._

The swordsman noticed for the first time that the young sales woman was wearing a lot of make up. It was subtle but it was there. She had used shading to emphasize her nose and to try and round her eyes, and heighten her cheek bones.

The sales girl's hand moved up to the young man's face. Her finger traced his eye brows.

"The eyes are really good." The woman told him. "How'd you get that color, and what did you do to make them look so round?"

_Oh! Enough of this!_ The bender thought, and swallowing a lump that had suddenly formed in her throat she reached out with both hands.

Sokka was about to push the young woman's hand away from his face when he felt someone grab onto his left arm. He looked down to see Toph wrap both of her arms around his and pull herself onto it. His upper arm came in contact with something small and soft on the strong young benders chest. It took a moment for him to realize what he was in contact with, but when he did, most of the blood in him rushed up into his face and he felt his ears begin to burn.

"He was born that way!" The blind girl told the clerk.

"What?" The young woman asked.

"He's Water Tribe!" The girl told the woman while pulling the boys arm more firmly against her own body.

"Oh?... Oh?... OH!" The clerk replied.

The sales woman began to bounce up and down on the balls of her feet in excitement.

"I never thought I'd actually get to meet a wet...ter tribe man." The woman squealed.

As the very attractive, scantily clad young woman hopped up and down in front of him Sokka found that his eyes, completely of their own accord, had moved down to watch the syncopated bobbing of the woman's chest. As soon as he realized where his eyes were he pulled them back up to her face. But then something pulled them down again and he focused them on a black mark nestled between the woman's breasts.

"What's that?" The warrior asked, pointing to the mark.

Toph, who could feel where the young man's head and hand were directed rolled her own eyes and let out a snort of derision.

The young sales woman, who was used to boys and men staring at her chest, especially in her water tribe outfit stopped bouncing and with a disappointed sigh asked him,

"What do you think they are?"

"No!" the boy said in an irritated voice while shaking his head. "What's that mark?"

"Oh this!" The woman said smiling while placing a finger on the mark on her breast bone.

"What mark?" Toph asked.

"It's a black lotus." The woman told the blind girl, while stroking the symbol painted between her breasts. "It's the latest thing."

Toph, through his arm, could feel Sokka's heart race, and heard his breath catch in his throat. She didn't understand what was going on but she could feel that seeing this mark was causing a very strong reaction in her friend. She wasn't sure but she could have sworn that he was afraid.

"It's only painted on." The woman explained. "But I am thinking of getting a tattoo of it. It's the symbol of the 'Black Lotus'. It means that I can never be bought or sold, that I am a free woman under his protection. That anyone who try's to force themselves on me will face his wrath. And it also means that on the day of the last battle I will join with him and fight against the Dark Queen and her minions. Isn't it brilliant!"

The clerk finished with a little squeal of excitement.

"Where did you get it?" The young swordsman asked. Both girls could hear the desperation in his voice and it scared both of them a little.

"On the other side of the bridge." The woman answered. "There is a tent of body painters and henna artists."

"Oh... Thanks." The boy said, raising his free hand to his face and rubbing his eyes.

Sokka was feeling light headed and weak in his knees. He rubbed his face and massaged his temples. He had seen that mark before but he could not remember where or when.

"Toph... I need some air." The tribesman told his friend, while moving his hand to massage the back of his neck.

"Ok Sokka." The blind bender told him, turning him and leading him by the arm out of the tent.

"I'm here for two more days." The woman called after them. "If you want to get an outfit for your girlfriend. You two would be so cute together in matching outfits."

"Yeah... Thanks." Toph called back to her.

The young bender was really worried about her friend. She had never felt Sokka have this kind of reaction before. He was the bravest person she knew and that something as simple as a mark painted on a girl had frightened him to this degree had her very worried.

Once out of the tent the blind girl sent out a wave of bending, which caused a small stab of pain in her bruise but she located an empty bench just down the road in front of one of the buildings in the town proper. She led her friend to the bench and sat down next to him, still holding his arm.

"Are you ok?" She asked him.

After a minute the young man turned to his friend and told her,

"Yeah, I'm ok."

The two young people stood up. The young girl shifted her grip from the boys arm to his hand and she led her friend deeper into the fair.

* * *

They had now come to the town proper and the shops were permanent buildings of stone and compressed earth. They chose a small inn that had good smells coming from it and grabbed a light lunch.

They continued on towards the bridge over the river that divided the town. Right before the bridge Sokka spotted a small building with a sign that had the picture of a hawk on it. He mentioned this to Toph and the two of them ducked in. Sure enough it was a Post Office. The warrior pulled the letters he had prepared from his shoulder bag, and after paying the necessary fees mailed them off.

When they came back out onto the road the young warrior noticed something for the first time in his life. He was tall. The crowds of people had increased as the day had gone on and the road was now crowded with people. He looked over the crowd at the shops and realized that he was actually looking over the the heads of most of the people. It was a new experience for him. All his life he had had to look up, literally, to all the adults in his life, but now his eye level was just at the top of most of the peoples heads. He had never noticed it before. Especially the women. A few of them were taller than he was but most of them were shorter. And even many of the men were shorter than he was, and he could without any strain look over their heads. The young man smiled to himself with this new knowledge.

"What?" The young girl asked, wondering why he was just standing by the side of the road.

"Huh?" The boy asked caught by surprise.

"What are you looking at?" The girl asked.

"Oh, nothing." The boy replied with a smile.

The swordsman offered his calloused hand to the earthbender who grasped it firmly and the two of them crossed the bridge to the other side of the town.

This side of the town had a number of food stores and Sokka went a little crazy, especially in the butcher shop. He bought quite a lot of dried and smoked meat, as well as a couple of strings of hard sausages. At the grocery store he bought sacks of both fresh and dried fruit plus sacks of roasted nuts. At the dairy he bought hard cheeses.

At the front of each store they went into, waiting patiently was corporal Gok who would take any packages and sacks. _This is really dangerous!_ The young man thought as he handed his purchases over to the soldier. This was becoming an expensive stop and he was going to have to carry all this stuff on his back when they left in the morning, but not having to carry everything around with him all day made it so much easier to over shop.

The last shop they entered in the town sold woven goods. The young man began to look at the blankets asking his companion's opinion about different ones. He was surprised at how picky the blind girl was.

"Too thin."

"Too thick."

"Too Rough."

"Too soft."

"Too heavy"

"Too light"

"Too... too... green."

Toph was in trouble. She was running out of reasons to reject the offered blankets, except for the real reason she had, which she was never going to tell the handsome young man.

"What?" The boy asked, raising an eyebrow while holding the grey blanket.

Toph felt the blood rush to her face and she turned away from the warrior to hide the blush. Then she heard it. It was the sound of a distant gong being struck, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"What was that?" She asked in her most innocent voice.

"What?" the boy asked, but it was too late.

The young girl grabbed the boy's hand and began to drag him out of the shop.

"I heard a gong." She told him.

When they were out on the road again the blind bender turned to the corporal and pointing up the street asked,

"What is going on over there?"

"That's the entertainment section of the fair." Gok replied.

"Great!" The girl said dragging the boy up the road.

"But what about your blanket?" The tribesman asked her.

"We can get it later." She said pulling him along. "I'm sick of shopping let's have some fun."

The warrior shot the soldier a look as if to say _Women! What can you do? _As he was dragged out of the town and up into the temporary tents and stalls of this fresh part of the fair.

* * *

The first group of stalls contained fortune tellers. Sokka read off the signs for Toph.

"Ooooo... Lets go in." The young girl suggested.

"You go ahead." The young man replied. "I already know my future. It's all nonsense. Besides even if they could see the future where's the fun in living if you already know what's going to happen."

"I guess your right." The blind bender agreed.

There was only one thing the metalbender really wanted to know, and she was afraid of what the answer to that question would be. She squeezed her friend's hand and continued on up the road.

Next they came to a small stage with a musical group performing for a small audience siting on benches. The group was energetic and the crowd seemed to be enjoying the show. The couple walked over to listen at the outskirts of the audience for a bit. Eventually Sokka went over to read the playbill posted on a board nearby.

There was a large fat old man with a bushy white beard standing by the schedule. The tribesman thought he looked a lot like Zuko's uncle Iroh, just taller, as tall as the water tribe youth now was. The young man nodded to the old man as he began to read the notice to his blind companion.

"It's mostly musical groups, and some kind of a show called 'The Bold and Stupid Men'." The boy told the girl. "Then there is a play 'The Dark Twins and the Avatar' and tonight there is a puppet show called 'The Black Lotus and the Birth of the True Daughter'. That's kind of odd, a puppet show at night."

"They're Shadow puppets." The fat old man said in a helpful tone. "They use torches for back light so it's much better at night."

"Are the shows any good?" The young man asked him.

"That depends." The white bearded man said shaking his head from side to side. "The play is based on a new book by Lee Loo Ling. The novel is called 'The Dark Twins'. Which is the first of a supposed 'Blind Queen' Trilogy. I'm not a big fan of her writing. She has taken a number of old stories and legends and mixed them in with the actual events of the end of the war. She put in lots of sex, violence, and romance with all the standard 'Water Tribe Story' cliches of magic and wet kisses and the like. It's amazing how quickly she got the first book out. She writes quickly not well. But that hasn't stopped it from being immensely popular. Like I said I'm not a fan of hers."

"The puppet show is much better." The old man went on. "It's a brand new piece based on the stories circulating about this 'Black Lotus' and his adventures in the desert fighting the slavers. It's really well done."

"What do you think Toph?" The warrior asked his companion.

"I don't know." She replied. "It's a wooden stage so I won't be able to feel anything and shadow puppets really don't do much for me."

"Oh sure." The tribesman said apologetically. "I forgot, again. Well Thanks."

This last was said to the old man as Sokka gave him a small bow. The old man returned the bow and the swordsman noticed the pale blue eyes of the other man flick over him, pausing at his weapons, and then taking in the young girl. The teen felt he was being analyzed.

"My pleasure." The old man said smiling, while stroking his white beard. "Sorry for the lecture on literary criticism."

"Not at all." The boy replied.

The young couple moved off to the other side of the road, and the old man stood and watched them, still stroking his beard.

* * *

"Come on Meathead!" Toph called, pulling Sokka's hand.

The blind bender was pulling the warrior toward a small crowd by the side of the road. The people were standing watching while a large man was swinging a heavy wooden hammer above his head.

The man struck downwards onto the end of a seesaw like contraption. The other end shot upward driving a metal weight up a long pole which had a gong attached to the top of it.

The weight slowed and stopped just short of the gong, then slid down the pole to come to rest at the bottom. The crowd sighed in sympathy to the large man's failed attempt.

"Oh too bad." A colorfully dressed young man standing by the pole said with sympathy for the large man. "Let's hear it for Mung the blacksmith! Good try."

The young man patted the larger one on the shoulder.

"Whose next?" The colorful man called out. "Three swings for one copper. Ring the gong and get a prize. Whose next? You?" The man pointed to a large shouldered teenage boy in the crowd. "How about you? Win a nice prize for your girlfriend. Show everyone what you're made of."

The boy who had been singled out shook his head "No" and tried to fade back into the crowd. The girl on his arm looked disappointed.

"I've got this." Toph said to Sokka.

"Don't knock the gong off the pole this time." The tribesman advised.

"No promises." The girl replied with a grin.

* * *

_This hammer is really heavy_. The blind girl thought as she tried to lift the gigantic wooden mallet over her shoulder. _I really have to start training more. _She swung the hammer down and hit the reinforced end of the striker a glancing blow. The weight shot up the pole to a height just over the girl's head and slid back down.

"Well that was a waste of time." A well dressed man in a long green robe standing in the crowd said.

"She might do better if she jumped on it." Green Robe's companion, an older man who wore many rings on his fingers laughed.

"Or better yet, she could put the hammer on the see saw and hump the handle. Then she might at least get close to the gong." The third member of the group, a young man who wore an open vest with no shirt, so he could show off his manly chest to all the ladies, said.

"Hey! That's not very nice." A new voice entered the conversation.

This new voice was unknown to the trio. It came from an oddly dressed boy with dark skin, blue eyes, and dark brown hair worn loose around his head. He looked and sounded no more than fourteen. His accent was country not town. And if anything he looked a little simple as he stood with hunched shoulders, his head lolling lazily on his neck, chewing on a stalk of hay with half lidded eyes.

"I bet she'll do just fine." Sokka told the three men, brushing his hair over his forehead.

"Oh you bet do you?" Green Robe asked.

"Yeah, I bet that little girl will ring the gong." The boy answered defiantly, raising the piece of hay in his teeth to a jaunty angle.

"How much?" Rings asked.

"What?" The boy asked in turn.

"How much are you willing to bet?" Vest asked.

"What? You mean like money?" The straw chewing boy asked.

"You said you were willing to bet." Rings told him.

"Well yeah but..." The boy stammered.

"So you don't mean what you say?" Green robe asked.

"Well..." The boy started but was cut off.

"You always go around saying things you don't mean?" Rings asked.

"Afraid to put your money where you mouth is? You a coward? Is that it? Gutless?" Vest asked.

"Hey!" The boy bridled at the insult. "I ain't no coward. You want money I'll show you money."

With this last the tribesman reached into his robe, and after rooting around for a bit pulled out a single copper piece.

"How's that for meanin' what I say." The boy told the three men, while holding up the coin.

"Ohhhh! Be still my heart!" Green Robe exclaimed, placing a hand onto his chest.

"Well we wouldn't want to take all you have." Rings laughed.

Vest didn't say anything. He just rolled his eyes and laughed at the silly country boy.

The boy gave the three men an embarrassed look. Then he spat out the straw from his mouth, and his expression changed into one of fierce determination as he reached into his robe again. There was a moments hesitation then the boy pulled out his fist and holding it out in the middle of the group opened his hand to revel five shining gold pieces.

"How's that for a bet!" The boy said with only a hint of trepidation in his voice.

"Well now that is a real bet." Rings said.

"Now we're talking." Green Robe agreed.

"That's how a real man bets." Vest said, slapping the boy on the back.

"I'll take that bet." Green Robe told the farm boy.

"As will I." Rings said shaking the boy's free hand.

"And so will I." Vest added, shaking hands.

"So that's five gold to each of us, if she doesn't ring the gong by the third attempt." Green robe said shaking the boy's hand.

"Each?" The boy squeaked.

"We all shook on it." Vest said. "Or were you lying again."

"I ain't no lier!" The boy said with vehemence.

Sokka reached into his robe again, and after much digging and a lot of odd faces he pulled out a mixture of enough gold and silver coins to cover the bet. Just as he got them out Toph took her second swing and missed the target entirely.

"Ahhh hog monkeys!" The boy exclaimed. "My dad's gonna give me a real whippin' if I lose all this money."

"What? Are you trying to get out of this bet now?" Vest asked him.

"No! No!" The boy said. "It's just that it don't seem fair is all. She's already missed twice, and she's only got one swing left. It just don't seem quite fair is all."

"Well maybe we could give you some odds on this last swing." Green Robe suggested.

"What's that odds thing?" The boy asked, confused.

"That's were we pay you double or triple if she rings the gong." Rings explained.

"But what happens when I lose?" The farm boy asked.

"That stays the same." Green Robe said. "If you tell your father that you had odds he may not whip you so hard."

"Well that sounds good to me." The boy exclaimed. "So if you win I pay you five each. But if I win you pay me fifteen each."

"Yeah that's the idea." Rings said.

"Well that's a deal then." Sokka said while shaking the man's hand.

"No wait..." Rings started, but was cut off by the boy.

"Now you three ain't going back on a deal are you?" The boy said holding his hand out.

"Of course not." Vest said taking the boy's hand and shaking it.

"Three to one." Green Robe agreed unhappily, shaking hands.

"Well hot diggidy!" The boy said as he stomped his foot in joy.

The blind earthbender felt the signal from her friend. She hoisted the hammer back up over her head and grunting with the effort she brought the heavy mallet down while stomping her foot. Everyone was looking at the small girl with the big hammer, no one noticed the small earth pillar shoot up under the far end of the see saw. The end sprang up sending the weight flying up the pole striking the bell on the top with a resounding "Bong".

"Well will you look at that!" The boy exclaimed. "Well I recon that's fifteen gold from each of you."

The three men turned to the young man, who was now standing up to his full height, with his shoulders back, head erect, his left hand on the hilts of a long sword hanging from his hip.

Vest looked like he was going to argue, but Green Robe placed his hand on the shirtless man's arm and with his head indicated the squad of cavalry troopers who had just ridden up to the edge of the crowd.

"Yeah!" Vest said with ill grace. "That's fifteen gold from each of us."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Authors Notes:

Happy New Year!

Yes this chapter was really late, but I hope the length makes up for some of the delay.

I will try to get back on schedule with the new year. My New Year's resolution is to finish this story.

Thank you to all who have been kind and generous enough to leave a review. You all are wonderful and I really appreciate all the kind words and encouragement.

For those I could not reply to I will try to answer here.

GalanthaDreams: Thanks for sticking with the story, glad you like it. I am glad that the end of that chapter struck you that way. It is great to know that it worked.

RomioneRawr: Thank you very much. As to how many chapter to go I am not sure but I like the idea of a total of fifty chapters since I have Sokka and Toph walking five hundred milles that would be appropriate. I hope everyone sticks with me through them all. After this I don't know what I will do. Something short and simple probably. And in answer to your question there can never be too much Tokka in the world. It's what keeps everything in balance.

Sange: Yeah another long wait, sorry but I hope I delivered.

matt: There was no address so the best I can do is say here is the next chapter and I hope you like it.

** I do want to thank Vanill for translating my story into German, that is a great honor, and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.**

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.


	31. Chapter 31

I'll Walk You Home pt 31

Chapter 10

pt. 3

Distractions and Diversions

* * *

Toph hoisted the heavy bag higher up onto her shoulder. Meathead was playing a game of Pai Sho against the Fat Old Man from the stage area; apparently he was something of a local master of the game. The young girl did not care for the game. She could not follow it because of the wooden board, and even if she could she still would be bored. So she had grabbed the shoulder bag and with a,

"I'm gonna' do some shopping." had walked off into the fair.

The strap of the bag settled between her breasts which caused her wrapper to push uncomfortably against her bumps. The bag was heavy with the equivalent of one hundred gold pieces worth of coins, as well as overflowing with all the prizes she had won. She had to admit that Meathead was good at getting people to bet against her. They both had put as many coins as they could into their money belts and still had all this left over.

"Is the hand quicker than the eye?" A nearby young man's voice called to the crowd.

_Well this sounds interesting_. The young bender thought, as she headed for the sound of the voice.

"Three cups, two hands but only one ball." The voice called out. "Can you find the ball with your two eyes?"

"Place your bets!" A different older voice called out. "Five will get you ten, ten will get you twenty."

Toph sent her bending out and felt two men, one sitting on the ground at a low table and a larger older man standing behind him. A small crowd was starting to join together in front of the table.

The young bender pushed her way through the crowd to the table.

"How about one hundred gold?" The twelve year old called out, dropping the heavy shoulder bag onto the table, which almost flipped over from the sudden weight.

"Ho ho!" The standing man called out in joy. "Now there's a bet!"

There was a loud murmur through the crowd at such a monumental amount of money. One hundred gold was close to five years income to most in the crowd. You could nearly buy a house with that much money.

The young girl sat down crossed legged in front of the table resting a hand on the bag.

"That's the bet!" The blind girl called out. "Unless you're afraid to take it?"

"All bets are welcome." The man, whose name was Tau, replied.

The crowd roared their approval. This was going to be exciting. No one knew who this young girl was. She had to be rich, and possibly a little crazy, but above all she had courage, and the crowd was rooting for her. The cup and ball game had won a lot of money during the course of the fair and the towns people would like to see someone, anyone, even a crazy little girl, win some of it back.

Word passed through the small group by the table and from there it quickly passed through the rest of the fair. The small crowd quickly became a large one as more and more people heard about the crazy rich girl and the insane bet she was making.

"You show 'em girly!" Someone shouted, and the crowd cheered.

The young girl listened with joy to the sound of the crowd that was now cheering her on. This was what she enjoyed. She wasn't Meathead who liked to do things in quiet, or who loved answering question on top of question. What she loved was this adulation and praise. Now she was having a good time.

The blind bender raised her hands over her head in acknowledgment to the growing crowd and got another cheer in reply. She dropped her hands onto the table and got a sudden shock. He fingers told her something she didn't want to hear. The table was made of wood. She sent out her bending and found that she couldn't feel either the table or anything on it. The table, the cups, and the ball were all made of wood.

* * *

Sokka finished sliding the Pai Sho tile across the board, his move completed he waited for the Fat Old Man's counter move. The older man's move would complete the ritual. The short finger slid the piece into position, and the light blue eyes looked up into the dark blue ones of the young man. The two players smiled.

"Some crazy little girl has just bet a hundred gold on the cup and ball game." A voice in the crowd called.

The small group around the Pai Sho table turned to the sound and quickly joined the crowd forming around the small table.

"It appears you may be needed." The old man told the young one. "We can finish this later."

"Thank you master." The young man replied, as he jumped up and headed down the road.

* * *

Toph was scared. She really couldn't feel a thing on the table and the bet had already been made, she couldn't back out now.

"How's it going Bandit?"

The blind girl turned to the sound of her friend's voice. She motioned with her hand, and the boy leaned down to place his face beside her own.

"Everything is made of wood." She whispered to him.

"Just do your best. I'll back your play." The swordsman whispered back, and stood up straight again behind the young girl.

"Everybody ready?" The standing man asked.

A hush descended on the crowd as everyone leaned forward. Toph put her hands on the table and listened with all her might. The cup man, Chow was his name, dropped the ball onto the table and slapped a cup over it. The cups began to slide around the table in a blur. The wooden ball passed between the cups, the cups changing places. Chow put on a real show, he was a professional after all.

The blind girl tried desperately to follow the sounds of the scraping of the cups on the table trying to hear the rattle of the ball inside the one cup it was in. It was all too much. She had lost the sound of the ball and could not find it again.

Sokka had a plan. It would only work if the gamblers cheated, but for one hundred gold, the young man was fairly confident that they would. He watched and waited.

Finally Chow lifted his hands away and the three cups were left in a line on the table.

"Time to choose little lady. Right? Left? Or Center?" Tau asked pointing to the cup on Toph's right then her left and lastly to the middle cup

Toph had no idea. This was terrible, it wasn't loosing the money so much as just loosing she hated, especially in front of all these people. Even though her bruise hurt she sent her bending out but although she could feel everyone around her, the table was still a complete blank.

Murmurs began in the crowd of people gathered around the table.

"I say it's the one on the left." A man's voice said.

"No it's the middle one." Another said.

"Idiots! It's the one on the right." A woman corrected them.

"I say it's the one on the left." The first man said. "And I have ten coppers to back it up."

"You're on." A new voice said.

And so it went, with side bets being placed among the mob of people. The murmurs grew in volume, and all the bets and guessing was not helping the young girl in the least. In fact it was just distracting and confusing her. Then Toph felt the large gentle hand of her friend on her shoulder.

"Just make your best guess, Bandit." The young man told her.

_Oh what the hell!_ The blind girl thought, and raising her left hand said,

"The one on my left." It was as good a guess as any.

The crowd held its breath as Chow reached forward to lift the cup, but before his hand could grasp it, there was the ring of steel and the tip of a long shining blade was almost magically resting on the top of the left hand cup. Sokka had drawn Spring Rain.

Chow withdrew his hand as if he had just touched a hot iron. The blade looked viciously sharp, so sharp it could take off a finger or even an entire hand without difficulty. The cup man looked to his boss standing beside him. Tau looked to the young man who was now standing over the young girl with the sword in his hand.

"So Bandit…" The swordsman asked. "You say the ball is under this cup?"

With this last the flat of the sword tip tapped once on the cup, giving off a dull clack.

"Ah… Yeah." The young bender affirmed.

"So if the ball is under this cup then that means…" The tribesman said, and the sword flicked almost faster than the eye could follow, catching a reflected flash of the lowering sun, and tipped over the other two cups, revealing the blank table underneath, before returning to rest on top of the left hand cup. "That these two cups are empty."

Tau's smile never left his face as he locked eyes with the young man, but the gambler's eyes told an entirely new story, one of hate and a promise of revenge.

"A WINNER!" Tau shouted to the large crowd. "That's two hundred gold to the little lady."

The crowd cheered, and Toph raised her hands over her head and gave them her best Blind Bandit Smile.

Chow, who still had the ball in his left hand, he had palmed it early in the shuffle of the cups, felt like crying. There went a week's work in one bet and Tau was going to be pissed.

* * *

It took a little while for the gamblers to get the equivalent of two hundred gold together. Debts had to be called in, and IOUs signed but eventually the heavy sacks of coin were placed on the small table. Most of it was in silver which made it all very heavy and bulky. Sokka was happy to see Corporal Gok and his squad ride up. The troopers had apparently heard the commotion and had decided to investigate, and sure enough it was the "Quiet" young couple at the center of it all.

First Sergeant Lee even came by. He had heard the stories circulating through the fair and three hundred gold pieces was more than one of his troopers would earn in twelve years and the soldier wanted to see what that much money looked like.

Eventually the sacks were stuffed into saddle bags and carried off by the cavalry troops to be deposited with the rest of the pairs other impedimenta at the Company HQ to be retrieved later.

* * *

Chin stood in a corner of the room. Her bow was strung but she did not have an arrow knocked on the string, at least not yet. In this confined space she would have to rely on her long knife if there was trouble. The archer always expected trouble. It had kept her and her son Hu alive for a long time, fourteen years for him. He stood in another corner of the room, she had taught him well, always keep your enemies in a cross fire, even your potential enemies, even your potential employers. In Chin's experience the one could become the other in the blink of an eye.

Tau was pissed. That much was obvious from the way he paced about in the center of the room. The archer had heard the stories. They were flying through the fair. How a young pair of grifters had been scamming the scammers and cheating the cheaters. Tau was just their latest victim. And from his words he intended to be their very last victim, ever.

"We can't let them get away with this." The cup and ball player told the small group of gamblers, enforcers and the two mercenaries he had collected.

"What can we do?" Muk asked, sweeping his long green robe around him for emphasis. "They got me, Quan and Wu too, but they've got the protection of the soldiers."

"The girl is the key." Tau said. "We grab her without any fuss, and tell the boy to hand over all the money, all of it."

"They've got a lot." Quan said, eyeing the many rings on his fingers. "They got over three hundred from all of us, plus what they had to start with. It could be as much as five hundred."

"It's the 'without a fuss' part that worries me." Chin told them, as a small smile graced her lips.

Tau was sick of the archer. Always acting as if she was better than everyone else, especially the gamblers and enforcers. If she and her brat weren't so good he would have left them out of this deal, but he was in trouble. He had had to borrow a lot from the lenders to pay the young couple and he didn't relish the visits from the collectors if he didn't pay them back soon.

"What's that supposed to mean?" The gambler asked angrily.

"Nothing." The woman replied. "Only do you know anything about these two? Other than the obvious fact that they're better at playing your games than any of you are. Have you done any recon?"

_Bitch!_ Tau thought always using military terms, throwing her time in the army up at them like that. Aloud he said,

"What's to know!"

"They're just a couple of kids. How much trouble could they be." Wu said, flaring his vest as he placed his hands on his hips to show off his manly chest.

"What have you heard?" Khuc, the large, broken nosed enforcer asked.

Chin smiled at the leg breaker. Khuc at least was professional enough to want information about the prospective target.

"Nothing too specific." The archer told the group. "Besides the obvious, that the girl is blind."

Tau looked up at that. Chin spotted the gambler's surprise and noted it.

"And she is a bender." The woman went on. "Ring any bells? The boy is water tribe and is armed to the teeth, which means he's not a bender and has had to use his wits and his weapons to survive against the Fire Nation army and navy, which means no matter how young he is he's dangerous."

Chin let that sink in for a second before going on,

"Then there are the stories and rumors coming from the troopers."

"Let's hear 'em." Khuc requested.

"Nothing much." The woman told him, studying her bow for a second. "Just that the Cav have been waiting for a young couple for almost a week now, VIPs of some nature. And there is also a story about a water tribe warrior taking on a squad of lancers all by himself and kicking their asses, while a little girl was destroying My Lot, and after all that they were sent on their way with a kiss on the ass by the officer commanding. Oh, and one more story about how some sand benders had grabbed a young girl a while back, and the funny thing was that these sand benders went to sleep one night and they all woke up dead the next morning, cut to pieces, with these odd black marks on their foreheads."

The room was very quiet after that. The group seemed to be lost, each in their own thoughts.

"Now I'm not saying she's the girl and he's the…" Chin paused for a second, then went on, "…guy but if we are going to do this we should think it through a little more."

"Are you turning gutless?" Wu asked in a snide voice.

"Or are you trying to back out on me?" Tau asked.

"No!" the archer said in an emphatic tone. "I'm just saying if we grab anybody it should be the boy not the girl. He's the smart one, she's just powerful and will probably do what she's told."

That got nods of agreement from most of the men in the room.

"Agreed." Tau finally relented.

The gambler could see that he was losing control of this operation to the woman, which pissed him off even more, but she was making sense. He would get even with her once they had the money.

"Another thing." The archer told the gambler. "You're not paying us enough to break a sweat for you, so you can forget about bleeding. If this whole thing starts going south, don't bother looking for us to get you out of trouble. The two of us…" With this she indicated Hu and herself. "… will be long gone like turkey/ducks to the corn."

"Understood." Tau told her.

Chin thought this whole thing stank to high heaven but five hundred gold was a lot of money, and even if it was less it was still at least three and probably closer to four hundred, that would be enough for her to get out of this mercenary, enforcer way of making money. She could buy a small inn somewhere. Pay for an education for her son so he could make something of himself, have a future. First they would have to get the money from the couple. Then she would have to steal it from the gamblers. Neither would be easy but for her son she would take the chances she had to.

* * *

Toph was bored. She and Meathead were "watching" a dancer perform. The artist was on a packed earth stage in front of a small audience and the couple was standing on the outskirts. The dance was nothing like the formal dancing that the young bender had been taught by Madame Wang. It was closer to the style that she had felt Sokka and Katara had used that last night in Ba Sing Se, which explained why the young tribesman seemed to be watching the dancer so intently.

Sokka watched as the lovely young woman moved around the stage. She had pale skin, not as pale as Toph's beautiful fine skin, but close. Although the dancers head was covered in a colorful silk scarf her black hair was still unbound, and swept around her head and shoulders. Her round dark eyes flashed with merriment and joy as she danced, and her white teeth shone as she smiled at the audience.

Her outfit was a pair of lose fitting silk pants tied at the ankles by strings of small bells. The draw string top of the trousers ended just above the woman's hips. Above that she wore a short lose white silk blouse open down the middle which ended just below her breasts. Over all this she was wearing a long surcoat open on the sides and with a large cut out in the front also ending just below the dancers breasts. She wore a number of gold and silver chains, some linking coins together, around her neck. She also wore a large number of silver bangles on her wrists and ankles. The bells and bangles rang as the lovely young woman danced to the beat of a drum played by a younger girl dressed in a similar outfit. Sokka thought that the two must be sisters they looked so much alike.

It was a very attractive combination and the young tribesman was definitely attracted, by the full breasts and the swaying hips, and the long fine legs, for although the clothing covered most of the woman and the blouse and pants were lose fitting, there were still glimpses of fine pale skin through the openings, and the young man had to admit that imagination is a wonderful thing.

The dance itself was very interesting to watch, as the slim woman spun and twirled, jumped and stomped her feet, as she flipped and rotated her hips. The tribesman liked the strong complex rhythm of the drum and the bangles. The dance also seemed to require the young woman to hold her arms above her head quite a bit, which the young man liked as well. This was not the formal stylized dance of Kyoshi, or the acrobatic dance that Ty Lee favored. This was much closer to the dancing of his people but very different as well. He found it most entertaining.

"That's funny." Toph said.

"Hmmmm?" The boy asked.

They were at the far end of the fair now. The road was lined on both sides with caravans, carts that had small houses, complete with rounded rooves, a door in the back and windows on the other three sides, built onto them. The windows on the side facing the road had a shelf built out and with the window open the shelf became a shop counter. Most of the merchants here were selling jewelry, like that worn by the dancer on stage, and musical instruments. On the opposite side of the road about twenty strides away from the shops there was a large camp of caravans comprised of a number of smaller camps of small groups of two or three carts to larger ones of eight or ten carts and tents set in circles around a fire pit.

Toph had been "watching" the crowd. It had been thinning a little as the day wound down, now it was mostly young couples and groups of young men wandering past the shops. But there was a group of six men that she could feel beside one of the caravans nearby. They were huddled together as if talking. They did not fit in with the rest of the crowd.

"Just a group of guys planning something." The blind bender explained.

"That's nice." The young man said as he swayed his hips in time to the drum.

The group the young girl had been focused on broke up. Three of the men began to move down the road coming towards Meathead and herself. The remaining three waited where they were, behind one of the carts. Toph kept a foot on each group. When the first group reached the shop closest to the stage there was a loud shout of,

"NOW!"

The three men ran out from behind the cart and began sprinting towards the young couple.

At the shout the swordsman spun around, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, his right on the grip of his club. Toph could feel the three waiting men run out from behind the first cart and charge towards the two of them.

"I think we have a problem." The bender told her friend.

"I'll take the three on the left." The tribesman said drawing his weapons.

"Ok." The young girl said, taking a low stance and turning towards the right hand group. "And this time you are definitely the Jet."

"Let's hope we get that far." The boy replied, taking a high stance, at ninety degrees to his friend, while pushing his right hip against her butt, so he would know where she was at all times.

The swordsman recognized the three men running towards them. They were the three gamblers from the pole and gong game. Each had a wooden club in their hands. The tribesman took a reverse grip on his sword with his left hand while drawing out his club. He didn't want to kill anyone if he didn't have to.

Toph stomped her foot and shot the first man up into the air on an earth pillar, she felt a sharp pang in her abdomen but just mentally pushed it out of the way.

Tau was flying through the air. He dropped the club he was holding and screamed in fright.

Chow slowed down. He was a cup and ball man, a professional, not a fighter and this looked dangerous. Khuc sped up, he was a fighter and he knew his only chance was to close with the bender and take her out with one of the two clubs he was carrying.

Green Robe, Rings, and Vest slowed down as they approached the swordsman. Sokka knew that most inexperienced fighters when faced with a ready opponent would stop short of effective range then try to ease in to attack. The tribesman tried to look ready and willing to fight, to try to intimidate the three men, but movement on his left caught his eye, and he turned instinctively towards it weapons at the ready.

It was an arrow coming at his face and he blocked dodged it just in time, knocking the shaft out of the air with his club. He did not catch the second arrow from farther to his left and it hit him hard on the hip.

"Ow! Fuck!" The swordsman cried out in pain.

_That can't be good!_ The blind girl thought as she heard her friend. She shot a stone at the larger of her two attackers. For a big man he was very fast and dodged the stone. He kept on coming at her.

Vest charged in trying to hit Toph with his club.

"Shit! Fuck!" Sokka said seeing the attack on his friend.

The Tribesman shifted his right hand over his friend's head dropping the club parallel to the ground, parrying the attack. Toph's left hand shot out, sending a small earth pillar into Vest's bare chest knocking him off of his feet and sending him flying between his two friends and into the side of a caravan.

Green Robe and Rings after seeing their compatriot go flying by both decided independently to take a step back.

Khuc, the broken nosed enforcer, knew he couldn't get to the bender in time to take her out. He threw his right hand club at the girl's face, to distract her while he closed the distance.

Toph knew that the big guy had done something, but since the club was wood and she could not feel it, did not realize that a weapon was flying straight for her head, instead she turned her attention to the man not the club.

All Tau was able to do was give a loud,

"OOOFFF!" as he hit the ground.

Chow decided that he needed all his limbs intact in order to make a living and figured this might be a good time to leave.

Sokka, adrenaline now screaming through his veins, saw two more arrows coming at him, but also could see/feel the club flying towards his friend. Reaching over Toph's head he swatted the slower moving stick out of the air with his war club, while holding his sword up trying to deflect the lower of the two arrows coming at him.

Toph heard a loud "Clunk" of metal on wood in front of her face but ignored it focusing on Big Guy.

The swordsman was able to turn back in time to see the high arrow flying right at his face and dodged just enough to feel it snap past his ear, and over his shorter companions head. The lower of the two hit him hard on his left thigh but the heavy leather of his leg brace saved him from serious injury.

"Shit! Fuck! Piss!" The boy cried out from the pain.

Khuc was running as fast as he could, he was almost to the bender when his right foot suddenly stopped working, instead of swinging out to take his weight the appendage was stuck in the earth behind him and he did a spectacular face plant right in front of the small girl.

Chow was now running from the field of battle.

Tau had gotten back up onto his feet and confused by the hard landing was looking for his club in a dazed fashion.

Sokka saw two more arrows flying towards him. _How are they shooting so fast?_ The boy wondered with a sigh. At least this time they had his undivided attention. He was just able to bat both arrows down using his club and sword.

Green Robe and Rings helped Vest up. The three gamblers looked at the two fighters now standing back to back, as one batted arrows out of the air and the other used her bending to restrain the toughest man they had ever met, spread eagle on the ground. The three, without consulting each other decided to wait this one out.

The swordsman was surprised to not see any arrows flying towards him. In the brief time he had, he darted his eyes up and out trying to follow the trajectory of the last two that he had just knocked down. There off to his left about thirty strides was a small man or boy up in a tree, and then to his right at about the same distance he spotted a woman, kneeling on the roof of a caravan. They each had arrows knocked in their bows and the woman was signaling to the boy. Not good.

The tribesman did a quick check for wounds and found no arrows sticking out of him. He darted a glance to one of the shafts on the ground and saw that the two archers had been using heavy blunts. The arrows were tipped with flat heads made of lead. He had been lucky so far, no bones broken, but one of these hitting either himself or his friend in the head and they would be out of action for quite a while.

"How you doing?" The young man asked his friend.

"Almost finished." The small girl told him. "And you?"

"Archers in trees." The boy explained.

"Fuuuuck!" The bender said in a low quiet voice.

Khuc lay on the ground, earth shackles holding him down. He was totally screwed and he knew it.

Tau had finally found his club and picked it up. He then turned towards the young couple, saw the situation he was in, in the grinning face of the small earthbender in front of him, and dropped his club.

Chin signaled Hu to aim at the man's left leg. The water tribe warrior was wearing some strange sort of armor on it so he must be vulnerable there. She was impressed by this young swordsman. She had heard stories of fighters that could knock shafts out of the air with their weapons but she had never seen it actually being done. Losing Khuc was bad but she might still be able to pull this off. She would have to change tactics a little, which is why she now had a razor sharp broad head arrow strung to her bow.

"What do you want?" The blind bender shouted to the gambler.

"I want my money back!" Tau shouted back.

"It's not your money anymore!" Shouted the swordsman in reply, still watching the two archers.

"That's why it's called gambling!" The bender explained.

Toph stomped her foot into the ground for emphasis, Tau shot up into the air on the end of an earth pillar, his cry of surprise and fear turned into one of abject terror as he looked down to see that the ground beneath him had opened up just like a giant mouth, it even had stone teeth. As the gambler fell into the mouth it swallowed him whole and he was left in a very small dark space.

The young girl let out a grunt of pain. The ache in her abdomen had become a sharp stabbing pain. She really should have done something small but she just couldn't resist going for the grand gesture.

Chin had to get closer. No one would be able to block an arrow from close range. Hu was stuck up in the tree and it would take too long for him jump down and find a new position. She was the one that had to close distance with the swordsman. Taking a running start she jumped to the next caravan in line, taking a shot half way through the jump.

Sokka saw the incoming missile and was just able to block it. He saw the sharp steel broad head strike sparks from his club as the two weapons met. A second arrow came in from the other side which he blocked with his sword. Things were going from very bad to worse.

"Climb on my back." The tribesman told the blind girl.

"What?" She asked.

"We've got to get out of here, climb on my back!" The boy ordered.

The small girl threw her arms around the young man's neck, jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. The swordsman turned and began running toward the road. The three gamblers were in his way and the warrior shouted his war cry at them. The three men ran for their lives. Sokka ducked in between two of the caravans out of sight of the archers.

"Swing around to the front." He told his companion.

"Why?" She asked.

"Please Toph just do it ok?" The boys asked, desperation evident in his voice and manner.

He was going to try to make it across the road to the cover of the other line of caravans and he wanted himself between the archers and his friend.

"Ok." The girl said.

With his help she was able to swing herself under his arm and around to his chest, facing him now with her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist and her face next to his.

Chin saw Hu jump down out of his tree and take off running towards the line of carts on this side of the road.

"Hey! Just what do you think you're doing!" She heard an angry cry from a merchant as her son climbed up the outside of his caravan.

"Ready?" Sokka asked.

"Ready!" Toph answered.

The swordsman ran for the line of carts on the far side of the road. He had his head turned to his left watching for arrows.

Chin took her shot, but the water tribe warrior knocked the arrow aside with his sword without even slowing down. _Son of a bitch is good!_ The archer thought. She was starting to respect the young man she was hunting. She almost didn't care about the money now. She just wanted to get an arrow into him.

Hu took a shot but he rushed it and missed. The swordsman didn't even deign to block it. He just ran between two of the carts, and kept on running heading for the large camp. Sokka figured that the two of them would have good cover in the camp and he would have a chance to use his throwing knives in the close confines of the camp. The two archers jumped down and ran across the road and through the line of shops to see their prey disappear into the large camp spread out before them.

The tribesman ducked into one of the small circle camps near the edge of the large camp, and pulled up. Still carrying the young girl he snuck a peek out from the side of one of the caravans. He saw the woman and the boy come through the line of carts. The woman stopped but the boy kept running towards him until he was pulled up short by a whistle from the other archer.

"We have an agreement." The woman called. "We can't go into the Travelers Camps."

"Ah… Mom!" The boy complained.

"You heard me. Get back here." The adult told the boy.

"Yes Mom." The child answered, as he turned and headed slowly back to the road.

"Hurry up." His mother told him. "You have to pick up all those arrows before the soldiers get here.

"Yes Mom." The boy said jogging through the line of carts.

The woman looked out over the camp one last time. Then she sighed and turned and walked back to the road.

Sokka pulled back around the cart. Still holding his weapons he used his right forearm to help support Toph's butt and wrapped his left arm around her back. The young girl leaned back slightly so she could bring her face in front of the young man's. They stood that way for a moment both panting from the exertion, then they both started laughing.

"Well that was fun." The blind girl finally said.

"Yeah." The boy answered catching his breath. "You know, you could have blown your whistle at anytime and the troopers would have come."

"So could you." The girl told him.

"My hands were full." The boy explained.

"You would have wouldn't you?" The bender asked.

"Maybe." The swordsman answered.

"Meathead you are such a pussy." The girl told him.

"And you're a dick." He replied.

"I can't be a dick, I'm a girl and the rules say that girls can't be dicks." The metal bender explained.

"Oh you're a dick alright." The boy said, placing his forehead against hers and touching noses with her. "You've never been able to follow the rules."

The blind bender smiled at that. The boy and the girl stood that way, the girl wrapped around the boy, with his arms wrapped around her. Their faces touching. Their mouths open. Their breath mingling as their breathing slowed. Toph slid her nose down beside Sokka's. Their breathing began to speed up again. She knew his lips were there in front of her own less than a breath between them.

"Can we do anything for you?" A young man's voice asked.

The couple's heads turned to the sound of the voice and the tribesman saw four men and two women standing in the center of the circle camp looking at them. Three had bows with arrows knocked and the man who spoke was carrying a long knife in his hand.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well not too late, only a couple of days.

I don't know how Sokka is going to be able to carry all this stuff.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter, finally got a little bit of action back into the story.

Thanks for all the reviews you guys are just wonderful.

To GalanthDreams: I am going to address the sexual implications in the chapter after next, but it may get a little steamy in the next chapter to force the issue. I hope you won't be put off too much.

To Sange: Toph was using her bender to determine the shop girl's silhouette and compared it to Sokka's at the restaurant, though I think your idea about the circulation is much better than mine. If you ever find that T shirt let me know I would like to get one too.

** I do want to thank Vanill for translating my story into German, that is a great honor, and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.**

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	32. Chapter 32

I'll Walk You Home pt 32

Chapter 11

pt. 1

Healing

* * *

"Ah… No… Thank you… We're fine." Sokka told the dark eyed young man with the long knife.

The tribesman's eyes darted around the group. He couldn't move his head since his cheek was smushed up against the cheek of the young girl in his arms. His quick impression was that they all looked liked the dancer he had seen earlier, with dark hair, pale skin and round dark eyes. At first he thought they might all be related then he realized that it was more of a tribal relation and not a family one.

Their physical similarity was matched by their dress. The two women, one an archer, wore outfits similar to the outfit worn by the dancer but of cotton and wool not silk. The men had dark lose fitting pants and long sleeved shirts that covered their waists but similar in cut to the dancer's. The men also wore sashes wrapped around their waists, some with fringe hanging out of the layers. The men wore vests in place of the long surcoat worn by the women. All were shod in calf high black leather boots.

What struck the young man the most was that all the men had pierced ears and wore earrings, either gold, like the speaker, or silver. Sokka had never seen men with earrings before.

"This is a private campground, it is not part of the fair and it is not open to the public." Long Knife told them, it was evident in his tone that he was upset.

"Didn't mean to intrude." The teenager apologized.

"Yeah." The earthbender amplified.

"And especially if you were wanting a place to do that." The man said.

"That?" The teen asked.

"Yes that!" The dark eyed man told him, pointing to the two of them with his knife.

It took the water tribesman a moment before he understood what the man was objecting to.

"Oh… That!" The swordsman finally said in understanding. "Oh no, we weren't doing that."

"What?" Toph asked.

The young girl had unlocked her legs from around the young man's waist and was trying to lower herself to the ground so she could feel what was going on, but her friend, being distracted, had not realized what she was doing and kept hoisting her back up onto his chest.

"You know… That!" The boy said hoisting her up again.

"No I don't know." The girl answered trying to lower herself again.

"You know… That." The boy said, this time raising an eyebrow and tilting his head to the side, while lifting the girl back up onto his chest.

"What?" The girl asked, frustrated as she tried to get her feet on the ground.

"That!" The boy said, as the girl slid down a little lower. "I'm raising my eyebrow and tilting my head."

"That?" The girl thought a moment. "Eyebrow?"

"And head tilt." The boy told her, struggling to raise her up again.

"Oh…" The girl said, in understanding. "You mean it! Big I big T."

"No!" The boy told her, shocked she would think of such a thing.

"If it's not IT, then what's 'that'." She asked reaching with her toes for the earth as she slipped farther down the boy.

"'That' is… " The boy said thinking, still desperately hanging on to the girl's waist. "... as I believe this gentleman is using it, is a prelude to 'it'."

"Stupid, put me down!" The girl finally ordered, then she added in a whisper. "You're giving me this major wedgie."

"Oh sorry!" The boy said, releasing the girl.

Toph was caught off guard by the sudden loss of support from her friend and almost landed on her butt, but she was able to stop herself by grabbing the teen's robe, and ended up squatting down in front of him, before she could haul herself back up to a standing position and letting go of the boy.

"So 'that' comes before 'it'?" The earthbender asked in an irritated tone, while doing her best to pull her pants down, without looking like she was pulling her pants down, until they were more comfortable.

"Well… yeah in this case, yeah." The teen confirmed.

"No actually." Long Knife said. "By 'that' I meant what you seem to be calling 'it'.

"Well we definitely weren't doing 'that'! Or IT or anything like that or it or any kind of prelude to anything." The young girl told the man who had suggested they were.

"You're still trespassing on a private camp." The man told the couple, trying to sound irritated, but Sokka could have sworn Long Knife was smiling for some reason.

"Sorry." The teen said again. "We were up in the fair when there was a problem."

The water tribe warrior pointed towards the road and realized that he was still holding his war club in his hand. He looked at it for a second then turned back to the group of campers.

"Oh… Sorry about these." He said holding up the club and the sword. "They're not for you guys, and we didn't mean to trespass."

"Yeah." The blind girl confirmed, trying now to get all her various pieces of underwear down into a more comfortable position without actually sticking her hands down into her pants. "We were just running for our lives and your place was in the way."

"Yeah… no!" The blue eyed boy tried to explain. "I mean we were running for our lives. There were these guys… but you weren't in the way, well you were… kinda…"

"Put those away before you hurt yourself." The blind girl told her friend, as she pushed him behind her.

"There were these bad men." She began to explain, but was interrupted by the tribesman,

"And women… well woman actually."

"Woman?" The young girl asked.

"One of the archers." The boy explained sheathing his weapons. "The other archer called her mom."

"Funny I didn't notice her." The blind bender stated, turning to her companion.

"She was on top of those mobile house cart things." The tribesman explained , using his hands to illustrate someone jumping from cart to cart.

"Oh!" The bender said nodding. "No wonder I couldn't feel her, nothing but wood, it's as good as being up in a tree."

Zoltan raised his long knife. He wasn't sure if he should be angered or entertained by the young couple in front of him. They were amusing, but he was a Traveler, a member of the Tribe, not only a member but the head of a Traveler Household. It was a small household to be sure, one of the smallest, and one of the youngest, but it was a household for all that. In the Earth Kingdom the Travelers were second only to the Water Tribe, and maybe the Fire Nation, well and the Air Nomads, but no one had seen any Air Nomads for a long time, so they really didn't count, so for sure the Travelers were second, or possibly third, in the Earth Kingdom, for being considered mysterious, dangerous and magical, and that meant as the head of a Traveler Household he should be considered mysterious, dangerous, and magical, and here these two were just ignoring him. Ignoring him! And he even had all the fighters in his household armed and standing behind him. No that decided it, he was pissed, well maybe not pissed, more irritated, even though the youngsters were pretty amusing.

"Caravans!" The dark eyed man said his irritation evident.

"What?" Toph asked, letting some of her irritation at being interrupted show in her own voice.

"The carts are called Caravans." Zoltan explained, flashing his knife for emphasis.

"Really?" The dark skinned boy asked pulling up a small book tied to his belt. "What's the ideogram for that? Is it the one for house over the one for cart?"

The small girl huffed in annoyance.

Everyone in the Travelers group lowered their weapons as they thought about the question.

"Actually it's the one for traveling/journey above the one for home." Zoltan answered.

"Interesting." The boy said, marking something down in the book with an odd instrument. "Sort of like a home that is mobile. Oh that's perfect. And it's pronounced Caravan?"

"Yes." The dark eyed young man answered.

The Traveler was impressed. He had never had an outsider take an interest in the language and writing of the Tribe before. Also he was intrigued by the exotic look of the young man in blue standing in front of him, and by his odd writing implements. This young couple was mysterious to say the least.

"Can we get back to the woman that was trying to kill us now?" The young girl asked.

"That sounds like Chin." Zoltan said. "You should be safe now. She is a woman of her word. She won't bother you as long as you are in the Travelers camps."

"Which you are kicking us out of!" The young girl shot back at the dark eyed young man.

"Toph…" Her companion said in a warning tone.

"Well he is!" The girl replied defensively.

Before anyone could respond the angry voice of a not too distant young woman cut through the air.

"Those assholes!"

Sokka looked up to see the dancer from earlier and her drummer striding purposefully towards the entrance to the small camp. She was definitely angry about something.

"Oh, Oma and Shu." The dark eyed man sighed.

The water tribesman turned to see the twenty something black haired young man fiddle with his knife then fold the long blade into the handle of the knife and tuck it into his sash. The blue eyed warrior watched as the rest of the fighters lowered, or put away their weapons, and began to move away from their leader.

"Can you believe it?" The dancer screamed in frustration, as she approached the camp. "Right in the middle of my performance."

The fighters were now milling around trying to look innocent, the female archer was even whistling, albeit quietly. Their leader had a strained smile on his face as he looked towards the beautiful young woman striding past the mismatched couple. She didn't even give them a look; her eyes were fixed on the leader of the household. The drummer hurried past, trying to keep up with her sister, but she slowed and gave the bender and the warrior a questioning look as she passed.

Toph shot her friend an inquiring look; well as best she could without making eye contact. Sokka simply shrugged his shoulders in reply. The water tribe warrior noticed that the dancer was a few years older than himself and just a little younger than the dark eyed leader of the travelers. The drummer looked to be about Katara's age.

"Zoltan!" The dancer called out coming to a stop in front of the black haired man with the golden earrings. "You have to do something about those idiot gamblers. Do you know what they did? Right in the middle of my dance they started a brawl. Well of course we lost the audience who ran down to the road to see the fight, and we didn't make a copper when we passed the hat. You have to do something. Those assholes are supposed to stay in the games section of the fair and leave us alone."

"I'm sorry Mirela." The leader told her palcatingly. "I'll complain to the council."

"They had to be doing it on purpose." The dancer shook her fists in frustration. "I was just going into the section where I do my whole hip thing."

To illustrate her point the very attractive young woman slid her right foot forward and raising it up onto her toe, bent her knee revealing her shapely leg clad in the loose silk of her pant leg and began to rotate her hips.

Sokka who had an excellent view standing behind the dancer, was very impressed. Mirela was rotating her hips on three different axis at the same time. The body mechanics alone of such a dance move had the young warrior mesmerized.

The drummer stepped into the young warrior's line of sight and pointed at him. Blood rushed into the boy's face and he quickly looked down to the ground.

"It's you!" The musician said in recognition. "Mirela it's him!"

"I'm dancing Laura." The performer told her sister.

"It's them!" The younger girl said as she pointed to the young couple while hopping up and down in excitement. "Z you should've seen them! They were amazing!"

The dancer stopped and turned at that and Sokka now found himself being stared at by not just the leader and the two performers but the entire household. He tried to look innocent, though he was able to refrain from whistling.

"It is them!" The dancer affirmed. "They were the ones attacked by Tao and his idiots."

"They were great!" Laura told the group. "She was all like whoosh and bam!"

The drummer illustrated her description with, what Toph thought, were highly inaccurate earthbending moves.

"She had guys flying through the air, and that big guy was all wham on the ground." The teen then pointed to Sokka. "And he was like all over his girlfriend, knocking clubs and arrows out of the air, zap, whoosh, clang."

There were more movements illustrating the noises the girl was making.

"And arrows were just bouncing off of him" The girl reported. "They were just like totally together like this super team. And then she just jumped onto his back and he was running around holding her like it was nothing and still knocking arrows out of the air. It was totally amazing!"

"I should have known." The leader said, pointing to the couple. "There were stories about a water tribesman and a blind girl beating the gamblers at their own games."

"Water Tribe?" Laura shrieked.

"Yeah he's water tribe." Toph admitted, dropping her head in defeat. "Go ahead and touch him."

"Really!" The drummer began to run towards the young man.

"Laura!" The dancer said in her disproving older sister voice.

"Aaaa…" The younger girl said stopping. "But he's water tribe! I've never even seen a water tribe guy before."

"Besides!" A new voice, one that belonged to a female fighter, entered the conversation. "She said we could."

The fighter passed the dancer to join the drummer in her advance on the dark skinned teen.

"Gia!" The young man who had been standing with the fighter called out to her.

"Oh Bela!" The woman said. "It's only touching."

"There will be no touching!" Sokka said, making an emphatic gesture with his hands, while giving his friend a dirty look.

Toph just smiled to herself.

"How about kissing?" Gia asked.

"Gia!" Bela said.

"Oh! Yes! That would be good!" Laura enthused, taking a step forward.

"Laura!" Mirela said in a warning tone.

The blind girl's breath caught in her throat at the suggestion.

"NO!" The fifteen year old shouted, taking a step back, while holding his hands up defensively. "There will be no touching, no kissing, no… no… it-ing, or that-ing, or anything…ing!"

"Awwww…" The drummer sighed, as she and the fighter turned away from the water tribe teen. Then the musician turned having a new thought.

"But you could stay for supper." The girl offered. "Both of you, I mean. Oh please Z ask them to stay. I've never talked to an earthbender or a waterbender before."

"I'm not a waterbender." Sokka explained.

"Oh." Laura said in a disappointed tone, but then brightened. "But he is water tribe. Oh Z please! Can't they stay?"

The dancer gave the leader a look which said, "If you don't we'll never hear the end of it." And the black eyed man stepped forward.

"We don't have much, it will be simple fare." Zoltan explained to the couple. "But we would be honored if you would join us for our evening meal."

Sokka looked to Toph, who thought for a second and then said,

"We'll be safe here."

"The honor would be ours." The water tribesman said to the Traveler.

* * *

Supper was served around the central fire of the small camp with everyone in the household coming together and being served from a single large pot. It was filled with something called "Goulash", which was a mixture of meat and vegetables cooked in a red sauce. What surprised the water tribesman was that it was actually cooked in the sauce, not separately and then mixed together just before it was served. The goulash was then ladled onto a bed of short flat noodles. Sokka had pulled out his chop sticks but Zoltan had shaken his head no, and handed the teen something called a "spoon". The spoon was a very shallow, almost straight soup ladle. The swordsman had to admit it was a useful utensil for eating the mixture in his bowl.

The goulash was good. It had meat, always a good start, and the vegetables were cooked, not annoyingly fresh the way Aang liked them, and the noodles gave it a substantial base.

"If it is alright to ask." Sokka asked over his third helping. "Are you a tribe?"

"Yes." Zoltan answered. "We call ourselves the Travelers. Many thousands of years ago our tribe was called upon by a great king to join his army and fight a great battle far from our home. The tribe owed fealty to the king so we had to go with him, but since the battle was more than a year's journey from our home the warriors brought their wives and children with them.

"Well after a long perilous journey the army came to a great empire full of roads and towns and cities. And a great battle was fought which our army lost and in defeat the king we were obliged to follow was killed and his army scattered, but since our warriors had their families in the camp they kept good order and fell back to defend the camp. The soldiers of the empire made many attacks on our camp but we were able to drive them all back. Finally the kings of the tribe, for we have many kings, and the ruling council of the households asked for terms of the Emperor.

"The terms were that we could stay in his empire as long as we never fought for anyone, including the empire. We could defend ourselves and our families but that was all. We could never own any land, for any vacant land had been promised to the veterans of his victorious army. And we could never live in any of his cities or towns, for he feared we would betray any place we lived in to a conqueror. Thus we became the Travelers, always moving from town to town, from city to city.

"So you are nomads?" The blue eyed warrior asked.

"No." The dark eyed man explained. "Nomads have flocks, or follow herds. They have no need for towns and cities and avoid them. We need the settled people in order to survive. We entertain, and make goods for sale, or offer services. Without the townspeople we would starve, since we have no flocks.

"We have a circuit that we normally follow and travel from festival to festival through the year following the seasons. Not everyone is part of the tribe, the gamblers are not Travelers, nor are all the shop keepers or all of the performers, but many are."

"That sounds really fun." Toph said. "Your life is one long festival while you travel the world."

"It is not all fun." The leader said. "Sometimes the going is hard, especially with young ones, and the town's people can be cruel, but it is our life and we enjoy it."

"Sounds like us in the old days." The blind girl said bumping shoulders with the teen sitting next to her. "Except without all the running for our lives."

"Yeah." Sokka agreed wistfully.

After a moment Gia stood up and holding her hand out said,

"I'll take that if you are finished."

"Thanks." Sokka replied handing over his empty bowl.

The warrior noticed that he was the last to have any dishes, the rest of the group was over by one of the caravans cleaning up.

"Let me help with the washing up." The teen offered.

"Oh no." Gia told him as she walked to the caravan. "You two are guests."

"But that doesn't mean that the supper was free." Laura said returning to the campfire.

"That's right!" Zoltan agreed. "It's time for you two to pay for your supper."

"Of course." The swordsman replied, reaching into his robe for his money belt.

"Oh no." The leader held up his hand stopping the blue eyed youth. "Supper with the Travelers costs far more than mere money."

"Speak for yourself." Laura said.

"Shush!" Mirela told her sister.

"No, to pay for this bountiful feast..." The dark eyed man said with a smile. "You must entertain us with a song, a dance, or a story."

"Take the money." Toph said ruefully. "I've heard him sing and his artwork is better."

"Hey!" The teen protested. "Well I guess I could tell a story."

By now the rest of the household had returned to the circle around the campfire, many of them had brought instruments of various configurations.

"I'd rather hear you sing." The blind girl said.

"You said I can't sing. Make up your mind." The boy protested.

"You can't!" The twelve year old told him. "But I rather hear a short song done badly, than a long boring story done badly."

That got a laugh from everyone around the campfire.

"Fine!" The boy said, reaching out to a Bela, who was tuning a six stringed instrument. "Can I borrow that."

The young Traveler handed the instrument over to the water tribe teen. Sokka plucked a few of the strings while trying to find the correct finger placement on the neck with his left hand. Once he was satisfied he strummed all the strings striking a chord.

"I think I remember how to play this song." The teen said, strumming a series of chords, then he began to sing,

"Two lovers,

Forbidden from one another,

A war divides their people.

And a mountain divides them apart.

Built a path to be together..."

"I never did get to hear this next part." The boy said while still strumming. "But it ends with…"

"...and die!"

Sokka was surprised when everyone except Toph joined him on the chorus, all singing loudly and badly.

"SECRET TUNNEL!

Secret tunnel!

Through the mountain!

Secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel!"

The group dissolved into laughter after the last line, some even rolling onto their sides.

"Chong!" Zoltan half laughing and half shouting, pointed at Sokka. "You know Chong!"

"Who's Chong?" The blind girl asked.

"You remember Chong and his wife Lily." The teen said nudging his companion with his elbow. "He was the leader of those crazy wandering musicians that we met. They were the ones that gave us that stupid 'Love Potion', remember."

"Oh yeah." Toph replied with a tinge of bitterness in her voice. "I remember now."

The young girl turned away from the young man on their shared bench.

_What did I do now?_ The boy asked himself. Then he remembered that Toph had been pissed at him that night as well. _Oh crap! Good one Sokka!_ Though as he thought about it he did not understand why she was upset that night either.

"There's nobody like Chong and his 'family'". Zoltan said rolling his eyes.

"Be nice!" Mirela said bumping her boyfriend with her shoulder. "I think they're sweet."

"Yes." The dark eyed man agreed, while giving Sokka a sarcastic look. "Very sweet."

"I'm surprised we haven't seen them here." The dancer said thoughtfully.

"You're right." The leader said. "They normally come down out of the hills for the Fall Festival here in Song Doa." Zoltan explained to the young couple. "Chong likes to take his group high up into the hills to the smaller towns most of the year, but he comes down for the big festivals, which is where we normally see them."

"Enough about Chong!" Laura said, making a face as she said the name. "We still need a payment for the supper."

The young drummer stood up from her place amongst three young men, who were all trying to sit with her on a bench that would only hold two comfortably. The dark eyed girl began to walk around the group seated by the campfire. She was tapping her drum which she had slung on her shoulder.

"Someone still has to pay the price for trespassing on the camp of the Travelers." Laura said, striking up a rhythm, which was picked up by the other drummer in the group.

"For we are a dark, and mysterious people." The girl went on as she walked and played. "And we demand tribute from unlucky wanderers who happen by us on the road."

Sokka felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to rise. It was eerie to hear the girl's voice drifting over the fire, combined with the rising beat of the drums, the ringing of the bells and bangles on her wrists and ankles, and the fleeting glimpses of her figure as she moved at the edge of the fire light.

Laura made a final flourish on her drum, then in one swift motion she slung it around to her back as she reached forward and grabbed Toph by the shoulders, pulling the blind girl up onto her feet.

"We must have a dance!" The drummer cried out.

The twelve year old looked panic stricken as she was held before the fire.

"I don't dance." Toph told them blushing furiously.

"Nonsense!" Mirela said rising to her feet and coming over to the selected victim. "You forget that we saw you earthbending."

"Anyone who can move like that…" Laura said hopping over the bench. "…can dance, and dance beautifully."

The two sisters, each one pulling on one of the earthbenders arms, dragged the young girl into the open area by the fire.

"No! Really!" The small girl insisted. "I don't dance! I don't know how."

This was a lie. Madame Wang had spent years teaching Toph all the formal dances of the Earth Kingdom court, and poor girl had suffered considerably until the young Miss Bei Fong did them all perfectly. But she was not going to perform the stiff formal movements of those dances here in front of all these talented, original, performers.

"Then Laura and I will have to teach you." Mirela laughed hanging on to the struggling bender.

The group around the fire began to clap their hands in unison while they chanted.

"Dance, Dance, Dance."

Sokka stood up and raising his hands to stop the chanting called out,

"No. Please. She really can't dance."

The young water tribesman was trying to avoid the carnage that he was sure would result if anyone tried to force his friend to do anything.

"Oh I can't, can't I?" The blind girl demanded, pulling her arms free and facing the fifteen year old. "Who says? You? Mister Lovey Dovey Potion!"

"You tell him Misty Green!" Laura said.

Mirela moved up behind Toph and gently taking the girl's shoulders leaned down and whispered into her ear,

"I'll show you a dance that will be better than any love potion ever made."

"Sounds good!" The smaller girl said, pushing up her sleeves defiantly, looking as if she was about to start earthbending any second.

"But not dressed like that!" The older girl said, straightening up.

"Oh YES!" Laura said stepping in and joining her sister and the bender. "I have some clothes that will be perfect!"

"Toph are you sure about this?" Sokka asked, his concern evident in his voice.

"Yessss!" The blind girl growled.

"Sit down boy!" Zoltan said pulling the swordsman by his arm down onto the bench. "You don't stand a chance against the three of them. You might as well accept defeat with as much grace as you can muster."

"Come with us Misty Green." The dancer said pulling the young girl towards a caravan.

"You just sit there Deep Blue, and be a good boy till we get back." Laura said over her shoulder as she followed Toph and her sister to the caravan that she and Mirela shared.

Once away from the fire the dancer bent down and told the young girl,

"Don't worry little one, I'll show you how to dance for your man."

"Yes, Misty Green." Laura whispered from behind her. "Mirela is a great witch of the Travelers. She will show you all the spells you will need to know in order to tie your man to you for all eternity."

"And you won't need any silly potions." The older sister told the twelve year old as she led her up the steps into the dark caravan.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

A quick add on note.

About Toph and Chong. I have gotten a number of questions about that part. Toph was not in the episode "The Cave of Two Lovers". So she does not know the song "Secret Tunnel". The reference in the story of a love potion is from an illustrated story authorized by Bryke called "Love Potion Number 8" where Toph, Sokka, Katara, and Aang run into Chong and company after the war. Chong gives them a supposed love potion. Toph gets frustrated with Sokka, not realizing that she loves him, since he only talks about Yue and Suki. She storms off and meets a boy about her age named Ohev who is traveling with Chong. Ohev used to be a servant on the Bei Fong estate. Toph and Ohev have a little scene together, and part as friends.

I hope that makes sense and explains the reference in this chapter. Let me know if you have any questions.

Sorry for any confusion I have caused.

Thanks,

JustThisGuyYouKnow

Another late chapter, I am sure you are all used to it by now. They just get away from me. I can't do anything without going on for chapter after chapter. After this adventure I think a giant bird is going to fly out of the sky pick up our heroes and drop them off in Gaoling. Naaaaa what fun would that be. More adventures, more angst, more fluff, and more fighting. It is all waiting for Toph and Sokka, if they ever get away from the festival.

Thanks so much to everyone who has taken the time and trouble to review. I really appreciate all the encouragement and advice, you people are great!

To Mental Traveler: Thanks so much for the generous words. I will have some metal bending in the next chapter but it won't be quite what you had in mind. (Snicker, snicker.) It was supposed to be in this chapter but I do tend to let those darned kids just do whatever they want. Bad Me!

** I do want to thank Vanill for translating my story into German, that is a great honor, and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.**

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	33. Chapter 33

I'll Walk You Home pt 33

Chapter 11

pt. 2

Healing

* * *

Toph found the first tread of the short set of steps leading into the caravan. Her left arm swept out before her to find the opening, her hand found the side, and the insistent tugging of the dancer pulled her through the narrow entrance. She was truly blind now, and her free hand swept from side to side before her as her calloused feet slide across the carpeted floor.

To the young girl's left she felt cloth, a lot of cloth, soft and light, silk mostly, _clothing_ she guessed hanging from the ceiling. To her right was a wooden frame, _bunk beds?_ with more cloth hanging on it. The strong smell of incense, perfume, oils, and creams assailed her, and made her a little dizzy. The floor seemed to move slightly each time she or the dancer, still holding her hand took a step, and when the drummer mounted the short ladder behind her the whole caravan moved in response, and the blind bender almost lost her footing in response.

"'Can't see a thing in here." Mirela said, dropping the young girl's hand.

The green eyed girl widened her stance, to steady herself. Her feet soon hit wood. C_hests?_ She wondered. There was only a narrow path in the center of the small caravan. She sent her hands out to latch onto whatever was on either side of her. Her right confirmed the existence of the narrow bunk beds on that side and she held onto the edge of the top bunk. To her left was only the clothing hanging from the ceiling.

Behind her the twelve year old heard the door close and the sound of the drum being dropped onto the lower bunk. Ahead of her she heard the sound of spark rocks being struck together, and then the bender smelled a stronger perfume scent, which then increased with a new scent added shortly afterward, along with the smell of burning wax.

"That's better." The dancer said.

"Oh yeah! Much better" The blind bender retorted.

"You really are blind." Mirela realized.

"No, not really." The young girl replied. "It's just that I can't see."

That got a giggle from the drummer behind her.

"Well the important thing is that Deep Blue can see" The woman told her.

"And when we get through with you, you'll blind him with your beauty." The younger sister said.

Toph felt hands on her shoulder, unbuttoning her surcoat. Behind her she felt the teen sister's hands begin to unfasten the bender's heavy studded belt, where it joined at her back. Miss Bei Fong had spent her entire life, except for the last months, being dressed and undressed by servants, so she just fell into old habits and let the two sisters undress her.

"Yes!" The drummer said in a light tone. "We will turn you into a heartbreaking dancer of the Travelers."

The blind bender felt her belt drop away from her.

"Oma!" The teen behind her exclaimed. "What is this belt made of? It must weigh as much as you do Misty Green!"

The drummer held the studded leather belt up to the dim light of the candles and examined it.

"It's full of pockets." The younger sister said.

Toph heard a sharp intake of breath from the dark eyed girl behind her.

"Money!" The teen whispered. "It's full of money. Look Mirela, it has small pockets on the inside and all of them are full of coins. Look! Silver and… Gold! So much gold. You're rich!"

"Laura!" The dancer said in her big sister voice. "Put that down and help me here."

With a certain amount of reverence the drummer placed the belt onto the lower bunk and then turned and helped her sister remove the surcoat from the bender.

"Did you really win three hundred in gold from the gamblers?" The teen asked breathlessly.

"No." Toph replied disdainfully. "We got about four hundred today."

"Four hundred gold." The younger sister said in awe.

"So you two are gamblers?" The dancer asked unbuttoning the young girl's top.

"We just do it for fun." The blind girl said lifting up her arms so the top could be removed. "Or when we really need the money for something. We only cheat when they try to cheat us."

"Four hundred gold." The younger of the sisters said again as she reached around the blind girl to untie the draw string to her pants. "M'ela just think what we could do with four hundred gold."

"Oh yes." The older said disdainfully to her sister while removing the bender's robe. "You would spend it all on clothes and bangles and we would be poor again in a week."

"Not just clothes." The teen said defensively, while pulling the young girl's pants down to the floor. "First I'd get my own caravan, a really nice big one, painted in bright colors."

"And leave me with the old one." The older said scornfully, then with a sigh she said, "Little one, you wear a lot of clothes."

"Not that much." The blind girl said holding onto the bunk with one hand for balance as she stepped out of her pants.

That earned a laugh from Laura as she folded the pants and laid them onto the lower bunk.

Toph continued to hold onto the bunk. The smell of the scented candles, the pungent smell of the burning incense, all the aromas flooding the small caravan, her inability to use her bending, the closeness of the three girls in the small space had her head spinning. It was almost as bad as being on one of those miserable underwater boats that Meathead had invented.

"Well maybe for you." The drummer said straightening up. "But it's a lot more then M'ela does."

"And I wear more than Laura does." The older girl said accusingly, as she took the bottom of Toph's tunic and pulled it up over the young girl's head, reversing it in the process. "And I'm the dancer."

"Well not all of us need all that support." The teen said defensively as she reached around the small girl and untied the draw string on the bender's shorts.

"Misty Green you're tiny." Mirela observed in surprise as she tossed the tunic onto the top bunk.

"Don't mind her." Laura comforted the blind girl, as she ran her thumbs under the waist band of the shorts out to the sides pulling them open as she did so. "Girls with curves think they're better than us smaller ones, but our little curves make what we have more special to the boys."

"That's not what I meant." The dancer said with her hands on her nicely curving hips.

The older girl had genuinely been surprised by the small size of the bender. In her travel clothes the young girl had looked, well thick and solid, but now seeing the real girl under all the clothes gave the woman second thoughts. With the way the blind bender had carried herself, had spoken, and acted, the dancer had thought she was at least Laura's age if not older, but seeing her now without all that had been covering her, the dancer wondered just how old, or more to the point, how young this odd girl was.

"Well your Water Tribe boy doesn't seem to mind, does he?" The drummer said with a giggle, as she held out the left side of the young girl's shorts. "Seems he got a little impatient one night to see how special your little curves were."

It took a moment for Toph to understand what the teen was talking about, then when she finally realized her hands shot out to cover the repaired sections of her shorts and breast bindings. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart stopped. It was only at this moment that she remembered that she was wearing her torn and repaired underwear. Her knees became weak and she nearly toppled over.

"What's wrong little one?" Mirela asked, quickly reaching out for the twelve year old.

The blind girl felt two soft, gentle hands take her shoulders and hold her up.

"Laura what did you do!" The older accused the younger sister.

"I didn't do anything!" The younger replied defensively.

"Here little one, sit down." The dancer told the bender.

The young girl felt herself lowered down onto a cushioned stool. She gratefully sat down still holding her shorts and bindings.

"There, there." The woman comforted the girl as she stroked the bender's shoulders. "It's alright now. Your safe here with us. Nothing is going to hurt you."

"I'm sorry." The drummer said, kneeling by the girl and placing her hands on the twelve year olds leg. "I didn't mean anything. I just thought…"

"It wasn't Sokka." The blind girl gasped out, rocking slightly on the stool. "He would never hurt me. He saved me. He's my friend."

"What happened?" The teen asked.

"That's alright." The woman told the blind girl, shooting a warning look at her sister. "You don't have to tell us if you don't want to. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. You're safe here with us. Everything is going to be fine now."

The memories roared through Toph. The hard hands, the rough voices, the horrible dreams. It all came back to her now.

"We were in the desert." The young girl began. She almost didn't realize that she was talking out loud.

* * *

Sokka sat on the small bench with his elbows on his knees staring into the fire. Quiet had fallen on the group around the camp fire. Zoltan watched the young man. He had seen the look on the teens face before. Usually on older men. Men who had been to the war. They would just sit and stare into the fire unseeing, with something deep down in their eyes that the light would never reach. The Traveler wondered that a boy so young had seen such things in his short life.

The water tribe warrior sat up and placing his fists into the small of his back leaned backwards stretching. His back was stiff from all the walking and sitting on benches with no back support. Finally the teen stood up, turned around and pulled the bench he was sitting on over onto the ground towards the fire. He hopped over the bench and examined the two sets of legs near the ends of the seat. They were a simple X affair. The young man thought a moment then pulled his machete from its sheath and dug two short shallow trenches in the dirt under the legs at each end. This caused the bench to recline slightly. The blue eyed tribe's man had the complete attention of everyone around the fire now.

The dark skinned teen re-sheathed the heavy knife, and hopped over the seat again. He then sat down on the ground, stretched out his legs, his feet towards the fire, leaned back on the now toppled, entrenched bench, and let out a sigh of relief. He looked up to see that everyone was staring at him.

"Back got tired." He explained defensively. "Sorry."

"Is that a water tribe thing?" The dark eyed young man asked.

"No." The boy explained. "We sit on skins on the floor, and when your back gets tired you just lie down. I just thought of this."

"You know what would be good would be a blanket." The young man added thoughtfully. "You could fold it up and sit on part of it and throw the rest over the seat, that way it wouldn't be as cold on your butt and you could have a little padding for your back."

Gia stood up and walked around the fire to behind the boy and examined what he had done with the bench. She then went back to her companion and told him,

"Bela go get my small digging pick and a blanket from the wagon."

"What for?" The young man asked.

"What do you think?" The girl said pushing him up onto his feet.

"Here, you can use this." The water tribe man said holding out his machete.

"Thanks." Gia said holding out her hand where she stood across the fire from the teen. "It's nice to know someone's got a brain."

Sokka tossed the heavy weapon over to the young woman. It was a good toss, the blade flew flat with no spin to it, and the fighter caught it easily by the grip. She toppled the bench over and began digging.

"Bela." The woman called from her position on the ground. "Forget the pick." Then as an afterthought she added, "But bring an extra blanket."

It took a while before the young man got his machete back, but he did get a blanket out of the deal. The members of the household were now sitting with their feet towards the fire, reclining slightly against their overturned benches sitting on their blankets. A large metal tea pot was hanging from the tripod where the goulash had once hung. Things were being passed from group to group; more than just blankets had come back from the caravans.

"Try some." Zoltan said holding out a small dish to the guest. "It's made from pastry, nuts, and honey."

Sokka took a piece of the proffered sweet and passed the dish on. It was good, Sokka liked sweets, but sticky, so he sucked his fingers for a while to clean them off.

"Mmmm… good." The boy eventually said.

Next to be passed to him was a water skin. But instead of a normal spout this one had a small nozzle. The swordsman had noticed that when the Travelers had drunk from it they squeezed the skin and shot a stream of liquid into their mouths. This kept the lips of the various drinkers from touching the nozzle and seemed more sanitary.

"Start close." Zoltan advised, as he handed over the leather bag. "Or else you will be wearing most of it, and it stains."

The young man did as he was told, but he applied too much pressure and the stream of liquid shot into the back of his throat and he almost choked. The liquid was not water but some form of wine he had never had before. After his coughing fit, he passed it on to the next person in the circle, and wiped his chin on his sleeve.

"It's made from grapes." The chief of the household told him.

"It's good." The dark teen choked out.

When the wine skin was passed to Gia, the tall, slim woman stood up, raised it high in her arms, then tilted her head back and shot a stream of the purple liquid into her mouth. She continued to squeeze more out as she slowly lowered herself to her knees, which earned a cheer from the circle of friends, then she sat back on her heels, accompanied by more cheers and clapping, then bent her whole body back till the top of her head touched the ground, which had the group on their feet cheering her on. She then reversed the entire process until she was fully standing again lowering the now empty skin, to a round of heartfelt applause and whistles.

Sokka joined in the acclamation, wondering how the woman had kept from drowning herself. He would have to try that sometime, but not without some practice in a private setting.

Another full skin was found and was passed round the fire. Instruments were struck and music now began to rise up from the circle round the fire.

* * *

"I was so scared." Toph told the sisters. "So scared."

"It's alright little one." Mirela told her, stroking the young girl's hair.

"Poor dear." Laura said squeezing the girl's hands.

At some point the small bender had let go of her shorts and breast band and had taken the hands of the drummer.

The two women had not judged the girl. They had only offered sympathy and support. Had calmed her, been gentle with her, had offered understanding. The two had accepted her into their small family. Had welcomed her as a sister, injured and hurt as she was. And Toph had sat in the darkness of her unseeing eyes, without her bending to guide her, and let the story out to them. Had let the emotions role through her and out to her new family.

For this was a new family. Not like her own family, that wanted to change her, to judge her, to keep her hidden and quiet. Nor the Gaang, that family, for it was a family, was always in competition with one another no matter how much each member supported the others. This new family, no matter how temporary, was all about accepting, about welcoming her with no judgments attached.

"I was so sick," The girl told them. "And the nightmares, and they told me that he was dead, that he would never come for me. And Suki said he didn't want me… I was so scared."

"Of course you were." The dancer said, her soft hands rubbing the blind girl's back. "Anyone would have been."

"I was so scared…" The little girl told them, choking back tears, "… that I peed myself."

"Oh poor little Misty Green." The oldest sister said, tears in her own voice as she hugged the youngsters shoulders. "Who wouldn't."

"They were just lucky it wasn't me." The middle sister told the younger, as she hugged her. "If it had been me, pee would have been the least of their worries."

That got a smile from the blind girl and a giggle from the dancer.

"Oh yeah!" The drummer went on. "They would have needed a bucket and a mop to clean up after me."

This last earned her a genuine laugh from her new sister and her older one as well.

"He cleaned me up." The girl told them. "And I was so mean to him. I called him names and told him I wished he were dead."

"Don't worry little one." The oldest of the three told her, rising up and squeezing her shoulders. "Deep Blue understands and has forgiven you."

"You only have to see how he looks at you to know that." The middle sister told the younger, taking her hands again.

"He was so brave." The twelve year old explained. "He fought them all and killed them to save me."

"Oh if only a boy loved me that much." The drummer sighed.

"He doesn't love me." Toph said lowering her head. "He doesn't even like…"

She did not finish the sentence, for a forgotten moment, in a hot musky smelling tent on the desert, with her hands resting on firm, wet skin came rushing back to her. And a deep male voice saying, _"Maybe it's that… I like you more than I ever liked Suki..."_ rang through her head.

The blind bender shot up onto her feet. Her heart fluttered in her chest like a small bird trying to escape from the cage of her ribs. _He likes me! _Her breath caught in her throat. _He said he likes me!_ Her knees grew weak. Then she remembered what had happened right before that moment and her face grew scarlet, and she dropped down again onto the stool.

"Are you alright, Misty Green?" Mirela asked taking her shoulders.

"He likes me." The young girl whispered.

"Do ya think!" Giggled the drummer.

"Then dance for him." Mirela told her.

"Yes!" The young girl smiled, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I will!"

* * *

"Ok…" Sokka was saying. "So finger tips, then the flats, then the palm, right?"

"Right." Emilian, the male drummer in the group agreed.

The older man was teaching the teen how to play the doumbek, which was the drum most used by the Travelers. The body was brass, and shaped like an hourglass with a goatskin head. It could be played either under the arm or between the legs and was usually played with just the hands. The water tribesman was used to using a beater on the shallow hand and large dancing drums of his people so he was having a little trouble getting the hang of the different sounds that could be obtained with the different parts of the hand striking the drum.

"Also it depends on where you strike the skin." Emilian explained. "Nearer the edge gives a higher tone and then it gets lower as you move into the center."

The drummer struck the drum in each area to illustrate.

"Now with your thumb ring you can strike the edge to get a sharp sound." The older man explained.

The rhythms Emilian showed the teen were much more complex than what he was used to and he had a hard time copying the experienced older man.

"That's alright." The drummer told him, patting him on the shoulder. "Just play along with the simple beat and keep practicing. You'll get it eventually."

"Are these for sale in the fair?" The warrior asked. "I'd like to get one."

"Of course." The older man said, waving his arm in the general direction of the road. "This whole section of the fair has instruments, clothing and jewelry of the Tribe for sale."

"Thanks." The teen replied, handing back the drum.

"No, borrow it for the night and play along with us." Emilian told him. "Just don't try to do too much and you will be fine. Especially when the dancing starts."

The older man returned to his section of the circle and picked up another drum, sat down and began to play.

"I wonder where the dancers are." Zoltan mused. "Mirela's taking her own sweet time in returning."

"Well you know girls." The water tribesman said. "They're probably talking about clothes, or feelings or something."

The dark eyed man smiled at the offhand remark.

"Oh is that what we girls do?" Gia asked from across the fire.

The tall young woman had been tongue wrestling with Bela for the last few minutes, the young man was the obvious loser since he almost fell off of the bench when the fighter released her grip on his face.

"Well I'm not a curvy dancer who makes her money shaking her hips and tits." The slim woman said rising to her feet. "But perhaps I can entertain our guest for a minute or two while he is waiting for the professionals."

Gia reached around behind her, up under her surcoat by her shoulder blades, and when her hands flew out there was the sound of metal clicking onto metal, and she had two of the long knives of the Travelers unfolded, one in each hand, the fine steel of the blades glinting in the fire light.

Sokka leaned towards Zoltan on his left and quietly asked,

"Two questions. Would it be considered rude to refuse the challenge?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to say. But this is not a serious challenge, she won't actually hurt you, well not much anyway. She's just had a lot of wine tonight."

"Wonderful." The fifteen year old replied despondently.

"What was your second question?" The leader of the household asked.

"Oh.. I was just wondering where she hid those things in that skimpy outfit." The teen answered.

"That I don't know." Zoltan replied. "I just know she has four more of them someplace."

"Great!" The swordsman said without enthusiasm. "It just keeps getting better and better."

"Come along blue eyes." The woman called, moving around the fire. "Let's dance."

* * *

Toph stood in the middle of the caravan and swayed slightly from side to side. She reached out and took hold of the top bunk again to steady herself. She was feeling strange and embarrassed. At least she had some clothes on now. The two sisters had kept saying "That won't do", or "This won't work," as they removed each piece of her underwear until she was stark naked. The small bender had folded her arms across her chest as she stood there.

"You say you've been walking a lot?" The dancer had asked from behind her.

"A… Yeah." The girl had answered embarrassed by the scrutiny.

"What have you been eating?" The woman then had asked.

"Dried meat mostly." The bender had replied, arching an eyebrow and turning around to face the questioner.

"Oh yeah!" The drummer had remarked when she saw the back of the blind girl. "We have got to do more walking."

"Less noodles and more dried meat too." The dancer had agreed.

The young girl wasn't sure what the two sisters were talking about, but she was sure she didn't like it.

"What happened there?" The older of the two then had asked.

"Where?" The misty eyed girl had asked.

"That bruise on your stomach." The woman had replied.

"And that one on your face." The younger of the two had commented. "Is that from …?"

"Oh those." The girl replied. "They're nothing. I got in a fight in the last town we visited about a week or so ago. I kicked her ass but she got in a couple of good ones too."

The two sisters were quiet after that statement. They were not fighters, they were entertainers, and although they knew many female fighters, Gia and Kizzy in their own household, they were always surprised at how casually fighters could treat their own injuries.

"Here try this on." The drummer finally said, slipping something under the bender's feet. "This will look good under the pants.

The loin cloth was very small and the back was just a rolled up piece of silk that rode in the space between the small girl's buttocks.

"Well I see you have a little dark nest for a certain Water bird to visit." The middle of the three had remarked as she helped the blind girl into the tiny bit of silk.

That had earned the younger sister a questioning look from the bender and a cautionary,

"Laura!" from the older sibling.

Toph was not sure what the teen was talking about.

When the blind girl had complained about the back giving her a wedgie the teen had told her,

"If it's comfortable you're not wearing it right."

The drummer should know, these were her clothes after all.

Next came the breast wrapper, which was a complete misnomer. It didn't wrap anything. It was two small pieces of lace held together by some strings.

Next were the silk pants which had been too long for the short girl, so the dancer had rolled up the waist band until the crotch was tight up against the small benders groin, and the waist rested just above her hips. The material was light and felt very soft against her skin but the girl was worried and asked,

"Can he see through this?"

"No, not really, don't worry." The dancer told her

"What does 'not really' mean?" The blind girl asked.

"What you do." Laura explained. "Is to make sure you always stand between him and the fire, and stand with your legs apart. That way the light will shine through the pants."

"Don't listen to her. It's fine." Mirela assured her.

The blouse had been a problem. The two sisters had a hard time finding one small enough for the young girl's slight frame. Eventually they thought that one of the drummer's older ones from a few years back would work. It felt very tight to the blind girl and the front didn't even have any buttons on it to close it up, leaving the center of her chest exposed which she was not used to and she had to force herself to keep from touching it all the time as any breath of air tickled the area. She had the same problem with the wide expanse of exposed skin from the top of the pants on her hips to the blouse which ended just below her small breasts.

The younger sister had wanted to add make up to Toph's nipples to darken them.

"That way they'll show through the white blouse." The drummer had explained.

"Laura stop that." The dancer had told her sibling. "You always want to do too much. Remember less is more, at least where makeup is concerned. Remember Misty Green, you don't want to show too much, you just want to hint what you have, that way the men will keep their eyes on you, hoping that they will catch of glimpse of something they shouldn't. Men are very stupid."

Toph couldn't argue with that. At least the two performers had not insisted that she wear shoes. The bender was now waiting with less and less patience for the two to find an over dress for her.

"This is the one." The younger sister said.

"That looks like it will fit and it's a good color too." The older had agreed.

The small bender felt something slipped over her head and then draped down her front and back. After much pulling and shifting the two performers were satisfied, and the girl felt a scarf tied around her chest just below her breasts, which were still only covered by the blouse with the tiny wrapper underneath.

"Now all we need is a head scarf, jewelry, hair and makeup." The drummer said happily.

The young bender sighed.

"You know, tomorrow we should go shopping." The dancer told the young girl. "That way you could have your own clothes that would fit better."

Toph sighed again. _Shopping what joy!_ She thought.

"That would be fun!" The drummer exclaimed, clapping her hands.

* * *

Sokka took his time standing up. He was thinking. _This is not my fault!_ He told himself. _I really didn't do anything to deserve this._ He slowly unbuckled his new weapons belt and lowered it to the ground. Gia was standing a few paces away shifting her weight from foot to foot impatiently spinning the two knives in her hands. _She looks like she's really good at this. _The young warrior had learned a long time ago, well a little less than a year ago really, not to underestimate an unknown opponent. And the lesson had been reinforced many times during the war. _The real lesson is not to over-estimate my own skill and abilities_. The swordsman corrected himself.

The young man looked at his weapons laid out now on the ground. He had never trained in this kind of knife fighting, lots of knife throwing sure, but not this close, fast, hand to hand knife fighting, and he wasn't sure what would work best for him. Then the idea struck him. _My fans!_ Yes the Kyoshi war fans would be good for close quarters weapons combat. That was what they were designed for, though for use against swordsman or firebenders not crazy, half drunk, knife wielding, beautiful young women. The only problem was that his fans were buried in his back pack, which was safe and secure in the company headquarters. He had unthinkingly put them in his pack over a week ago, as if they were an unneeded part of his past.

Eventually he decided that his best course of action, for both political as well as practical reasons, was to fight unarmed using the Kyoshi hand to hand combat techniques he had learned from Suki. The water tribe warrior stepped out in the clear area around the fire, bowed towards his opponent, and took his stance.

Gia returned the bow, and took her stance. She was going to enjoy this, but she was wary of this teenager. She had heard the story of how he had batted arrows out of the air, and he was water tribe. There were a lot of stories about water tribe warriors. How they would go crazy in combat, how they were more like wolves than men when they fought. And then there were the tales of the old magic that they could call on. She advanced cautiously.

Sokka had an idea, the idea turned into a plan. He wasn't sure it would work but it was better than getting knifed. The young man put the plan into action. He raised his index finger.

"What?" The female fighter asked stopping her advance on the young man.

"Well… to tell the truth you're scaring the hell out of me right now." The warrior explained. "So what if I just surrender and admit you beat me."

"What?" The woman asked confused.

"I give up." The dark skinned teen answered. "I admit defeat. You Win."

"You can't do that." The fighter objected, breaking her stance and standing up.

"Why not?" The water tribesman asked. "I mean yeah I could wait till I'm all sweaty and dirty, and probably cut to ribbons first, but that doesn't sound like fun to me. Why not just get to the point and I'll surrender now."

Sokka raised his arms and shrugged his shoulders to emphasize his point.

Gia wasn't sure what was happening but she suspected that the outsider was making fun of her somehow. She wasn't sure how he was doing it, but this didn't feel right.

"Ahhhh…" The woman said, unsure of what was going on. "No… no you have to fight first then you can give up."

"Why?" The boy asked. "It's obvious I don't stand a chance against you. I concede that you're much better than me at this kind of fighting, so it only makes sense for me to admit it and give up now."

"I don't think this is right." The slim girl said doubtfully.

"Sure it is." The fifteen year old insisted. "It's not like you're a bully who just likes to hurt weaker people like me. You're a fighter who fights to win honor and respect. How can I give you more honor and respect than by surrendering at the mere sight of you ready to fight."

"I mean really…" Sokka turned and appealed to the household seated around the fire. "… what more could a fighter want than to be so intimidating that people surrender at the start of the fight. Right?"

There were murmurs of agreement from those in the circle of light.

"Well what if I fight you with one hand behind my back." The knife fighter suggested.

"Oh no! I'm not falling for that one." The boy insisted folding his arms across his chest.

"I'll only use my left hand." The woman told him.

"Nope you won fair and square." The warrior said holding up his hands in surrender. "I give up, I call uncle, you win."

Gia stood there confused and silent. She had never had anyone just give up to her before and she didn't know what to do.

"Well I guess that's it then." Zoltan called out from the side lines. "Congratulations Gia for another victory."

The head of the Traveler household with a smile on his face, led a round of applause and cheers for the victorious fighter. The water tribe teen joined in with the general acclaim. The winner acknowledged her victory by holding up her arms and spinning her blades in her hands, still looking a little confused.

Sokka, still cheering and clapping, turned and began to walk back to his seat in the circle but was stopped when the dark eyed leader raised his hands for silence and called out,

"Now you can collect your prize."

"Prize?" The fifteen year old asked, giving the Traveler a dark look, while raising a single eyebrow.

"Oh yes." The man in his twenties said into the silence he had created. "Gia as the winner gets to claim a penalty from you, the looser."

"A penalty eh?" The teen asked, the dark look had transformed into one saying _"Thanks Bro."_

"Well then." The woman said after thinking a moment. "I claim as my prize a kiss."

"Gia…" Whined the young woman's tongue wrestling partner.

There was a chorus of "Ohhss" and "Ahhss" and some giggles from the circle of onlookers.

"Oh don't worry Bela." The fighter told her companion sharply, then with a wicked smile she said, "I want a kiss on my foot."

With that the tall Traveler lifted her right foot in the air and pointing at it with one of her knives, wiggled it towards the water tribe teen. This was greeted by a loud chorus of laughter and clapping from the circle around the fire. None more vociferous than her caravan mate.

"Oh….. Kay…." The teen said stepping forward with a confused look on his face. "But could we get back to the prize you want."

That brought silence to the group, all except Zoltan who gave a loud bark of laughter.

"What do you mean?" The slim girl asked, her hands on her hips.

"Well it's just that… "Explained the handsome young man. "… kissing a beautiful woman anywhere, but especially on her foot, sounds more like a prize for me not for you. It is a privilege that any man would beg for. I just hope you will be satisfied."

With that Sokka dropped down onto his left knee before the attractive young woman, and beckoned with his hand for her to place her foot on his right thigh. There was a round of applause from the circle for the young man's gallantry.

Still smirking, Gia raised her right foot and placed it where the young man had indicated. She was wearing the calf high boots worn by the other members of the Travelers Tribe. Only the performers went about barefoot. The dark skinned young man grasped the heel of the shoe with his left hand, while placing his right firmly at the top of the attractive young woman's calf.

"Hey?" The slim woman said, her hands still on her hips.

"You said you wanted me to kiss your foot." The boy explained, pulling the shoe off. "Not your boot."

Gia gave a little squawk as the boot came off. Next her sock followed the boot onto the ground. From the stink coming off of the sock, as he tossed it to the side, the fifteen year old realized that the fighter was obviously not very hygiene conscious. Holding the heel of the slim woman's foot with his left hand he pulled the cuff of his shirt sleeve down over the palm of his right hand, brought it to his mouth and spit onto it. Using the now wet cuff he scrubbed the area of the top of the girl's foot just where it joined her leg.

"Ewuuuu…" the woman complained.

"Now, now." The boy told her. "My mouth is going to be there in a few seconds and what's a little more spit between the victor and the vanquished."

The handsome tribesman scrubbed with some vigor. Sokka had a plan.

* * *

Toph was now dressed and draped in scarves and chains of coins. The metal of the necklaces was cold against her breasts. The two sisters had even wrapped a string of small coins around the scarf on her head. The young girl's hair had been brushed out and carefully arranged down her chest and back. The dancer had tried to get her to take off her armlet of space metal, but the bender had adamantly refused. She never took it off, wearing it even when she bathed. It was her most precious possession.

The problem now seemed to be a question of bangles. From what the blind girl could determine bangles were thin, narrow silver bracelets, that jingled when you shook your wrists, and were vital to dancing in some way. The only ones the two sisters had were apparently too large for the small hands of the bender.

"I can't believe you sold all your old ones." The dancer said to her sister.

"They were too small and I needed to get new ones." The drummer had defended.

"Well my extra ones are much too large and will fall right off her." The older of the two said frustrated.

"How many do you need?" The small girl asked tired of this whole getting dressed up thing.

"Well… four for each wrist and ankle." The dancer replied.

"Ok, give me your, what is that?" The bender asked.

"Sixteen." The drummer answered.

"Ok, give me your cheapest sixteen." The blind girl said holding out her hand.

The oldest of the trio handed the silver bracelets over to the youngest.

Toph felt the metal rings in her hands and began to push on them.

"What are you doing?" Mirela asked.

"I'm bending them." The earthbender replied. "I'm using my bending to make them smaller. I'll change them back afterword so you can still use them."

"You mean earthbenders can do that?" Laura asked surprise evident in her voice.

"No, just me." Toph answered, her concentration causing her voice to sound strained.

"Why the cheapest ones?" The dancer wanted to know.

"The metal has more impurities which makes it easier to bend." The blind girl answered holding up the rings.

The two performers took the bangles from the bender and examined them. They were the same except now the opening was smaller.

"Amazing." The drummer gasped.

"Let's see if they'll work." The oldest said taking the small girl's hand. "Perfect."

Once the bangles were in place the two performers tied strings of small silver bells to the young girl's wrists and ankles.

"That's it." The dancer observed looking the girl over.

"Thank Oma and Shu." The Earthkingdom girl sighed.

"Ok, now for the dancing." Mirela said. "First you have the head roll."

"I can't see you…" The blind girl singsonged.

"Shit! I hadn't thought of that." The dancer said.

"If we were on the ground I could." The bender explained.

"Right!" The drummer said, grabbing the small girl's hand and, picking up her drum on the way, led her to the door of the caravan.

Toph stumbled down the steps and felt the ground under her feet. She felt like cheering. It was wonderful to be able to feel the world again. She sucked the relatively fresh air of the camp site into her lungs and felt her head clear. The sweet smell of the candles, perfumes, creams, oils and incense in the crowded caravan had nearly knocked her out.

Mirela followed her sister and the bender out and closed the door. She stood before the small girl and asked,

"Can you see me here?"

"No problem." The blind girl told her.

There followed a quick lesson on Traveler's dance moves. There was the Grind. The bump, which could be forward or back. The Shake, which could be arm, shoulder, breasts, hips, or feet, or any combination of, or all of the above. The head swing, the hip flip, the snake (standing or prone), on and on the list went.

Toph found that she really didn't have too much trouble with the individual movements. Between her dance training and her bending katas she was familiar with most of them, well except for the shake, grind, bump stuff, but that was pretty simple. The one thing she had trouble with were the spins.

"I keep getting dizzy." The blind girl explained.

"You have to learn to spot." The dancer exhorted her.

"What's that?" The bender asked.

"You find something to lock your eyes on, so that as your body turns…" Mirela began to explain and illustrate but was cut off by the young girl saying,

"Yeah… That first part is a problem."

"Oh…" The oldest of the three said thoughtfully. "Well… Ok, forget the spins for now, we can work on those tomorrow."

"Oh, you need to teach her to trill!" The drummer excitedly added.

"What's that?" The small girl asked in a tired voice.

"Ok this is the last thing." The dancer said, seeing that she was losing her student. "But it's real important. The trill is a noise we make like a high pitched 'L' sound that ululates and is real loud."

"That whats?" The girl asked.

"It pulses really fast." The performer explained.

"You vibrate your tongue really fast to interrupt the sound." The drummer added, giving a low quiet illustration.

"We'll need to go back into the caravan to practice." The dancer said taking the young girl's hand. "Otherwise the whole camp will hear us."

"Great!" The small bender complained, as she was pulled up the stairs again.

* * *

Sokka rubbed the area on the woman's foot not just to clean it but to warm and sensitize the skin. He wanted Gia to feel everything he was about to do. He knew that most people pretty much ignore their feet, except to rub them when they hurt. But he had discovered with Suki that a girl's feet can be very sensitive to the proper stimulation.

"There, doesn't that feel better." The young man said as he finished rubbing, and smiled up at the victor.

The tall woman smirked back down at the water tribesman, but the warrior thought he saw a little light of pleasure in the woman's eyes as well.

Slowly Sokka lowered his head down to the sensitive spot he had just created. At the same time he moved his right hand around to the bottom of the girl's calf. Unlike the dancer and the drummer the cuff of Gia's loose pants was not tied to her ankle, and the dark skinned teen's hand easily lifted the pant leg up as he slowly began to run his hand lightly up the leg towards the inside of her knee. The stubble on the woman's skin rasped lightly against the calloused palm of the swordsman's hand.

His lips made contact, and he felt the skin jump, then he started the kiss. At first it was just a gentle chaste little movement of his lips, then he slowly opened his mouth, and began to gently drag his teeth across the redden skin of the woman's foot.

He heard a small gasp above him. He moved his hand higher still, until it passed the knee, taking the pant leg with it, and began to move it along the underside of the fighter's strong thigh muscle. His thumb traced the large vein running along the inside of her thigh.

The tip of his tongue moved out of his mouth now and began to lightly trace circles on the sensitized skin. The gasp turned into a soft moan of pleasure, as he pushed more of his tongue onto the woman's foot, then as his hand continued to move up Gia's thigh, his mouth moved up onto her ankle, then the bottom of her shin.

The water tribe's man heard the two knives hit the ground on either side of the tall woman, as another deeper moan escaped her lips.

* * *

Toph stood nervously as Mirela checked her over one last time. At least she was on the ground again outside of the wagon, but her heart was pounding in her chest, and her palms were sweating. She hadn't been this nervous ever. Not even before her first fight at Earth Rumble. This was a terrible idea. She had wanted to teach Meathead a lesson, but now she was sure all she was going to do was make a complete fool of herself. She wanted to throw up. _That would be perfect!_ She told herself.

The dancer took the young girl by the shoulders and told her,

"Ok, remember just follow me and do what I do. Listen to the drum, let the drum guide you, lead you through the dance. Nothing is wrong, any movement that follows the drum is right. At some point just let the drum take you over. Let the sound of it fill you up and let your body become the drum."

"Yeah sure." The blind girl said feeling sick.

"You're beautiful, Misty Green." The drummer told her patting her arm. "You'll do great!"

"Ok! Line up, Laura first then me than you." The oldest of the trio said, arranging everyone. "We go in at a run trilling and ringing our bells and our bangles."

* * *

Languidly Sokka sucked his tongue back into his mouth. Slowly he dragged his teeth across the skin of the woman's leg. Then finally he closed his lips and raised his head, releasing his grip on her. He turned to capture her dark eyes with his deep blue ones and in the hushed silence around the fire asked,

"Are you satisfied with your prize?"

It took a moment before Gia made any sign that she was aware of the question put to her. Then she blinked her smoldering dark eyes and seemed to actually see the handsome face looking up at her. She had a little trouble and had to clear her throat a couple of times before any words would come out. She was just about to say something when she was cut off by a loud drum roll from out in the darkness.

Sokka stood up and looked towards the sound. A second drum roll came out of the night and Zoltan shouted,

"Clear way for the dancers."

The blue eyed teen dove for his seat in the circle. The slim fighter had a harder time, having to retrieve her knives from where they had fallen from her numb fingers, then having to go back to get her boot and sock and run awkwardly back to her place by Bela.

With a third roll of the drum there came an ululating cry as, their bells and bangles ringing and sparkling, three beautiful young women ran into the light of the fire.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

This chapter was a bear to write and it took me forever. Thank you all for being patient with me. I hope it worked and that all the characters are true and interesting. You know me I'm paranoid, and very insecure unless people are trying to kill each other.

I hope kids still call "Uncle" when they give up. It is a really old expression from my youth.

x

Thanks so much to everyone who has taken the time and trouble to review. I really appreciate all the encouragement and advice, you people are great!

To RomioneRawr: Sorry no dancing this chapter but there will be dancing next chapter. I am very intimidated by it just to let you know.

To Anonymous Werewolf: Thank you very much, glad that you feel the Travelers belong in this world.

To Poppit: Thanks you. Sorry it took me so long to get this chapter up. Hope you are still enjoying it.

To Lily: Thanks! There are going to be a couple of more eventually. :)

x

** I do want to thank Vanill for translating my story into German, that is a great honor, and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.**

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	34. Chapter 34

I'll Walk You Home pt 34

Chapter 11

pt. 3

Healing

Toph ran behind the dancer into the clear area around the fire. She had her hands high over her head, shaking her arms to ring her bells and bangles, while trilling for all she was worth. _I must look like a complete idiot,_ the blind girl thought. But she was committed and would go through with this no matter what happened. Earthbenders meet things head on.

The green eyed girl was using all her bending to keep track of Mirela and Laura. Especially the dancer, since she was trying to copy all the moves the young woman was using.

_Step, hip flip, step, hip role, head role..._ The bender called out to herself, as she did each move. She knew she was about a half step behind the sisters. The younger sister was on the other side of the fire and was not following Mirela, but was making up her own dance as she played her drum.

_This is awful!_ The young girl told herself. She felt like an idiot, _speaking of idiots where is Meathead?_ She asked herself. _Probably laughing his ass off somewhere._

Toph had no time to try and feel where her friend was. All her focus was on the dancer now. She hardly even heard the drums pounding around her. Her eyelashes kept threatening to stick together from the makeup. Her lips felt greasy and tasted of wax and oil. Her stomach was jumping around inside her, so that she felt sick. And now she was starting to sweat. _Just perfect!_ She told herself.

* * *

Sokka was sitting in his place against the toppled bench searching for Toph. He didn't recognize her at first glance and he had to use a process of elimination to figure out which one was his friend. Mirela was to his left dancing in front of Zoltan. Laura was across the fire with her drum, which left the one to his right, she had to be Toph.

It took the water tribesman some seconds before he believed his eyes. She was the shortest of the three, but she didn't look anything like the twelve year old girl he had fought a war with and had been traveling with. This girl was all curves and soft lines. Her Beautiful black hair was down and swirling around her shoulders. From the side he was able to see the vast expanse of fine, pure white skin revealed through the open side of the surcoat. He could also see the lovely, round, swell of the dancers small but perfect breasts through the open blouse. He had never seen the blind bender look so... well girlie.

This girl wasn't the voluptuous dancer or even the curvy drummer but she also was not the little girl he had met in Omashu, with the stick arms and legs. His friend was changing, almost right before the young man's eyes. Her arms and legs were more defined, with curves that weren't there a few short months ago. The loose pants were thin and clung to all the right places on the girl's hips and legs, and Toph had a lot of right places. Her whole body was full of curves now. From her shoulders down to the swell of her hips, _when did that happen?_ The tribesman asked himself. _And that is one sweet ass she's got there._ The arrogant teen in his head noted. _Shut up!_ He told himself. _You're disgusting! She's just a kid._

The young girl's movement was not what he had expected either. Toph was normally fast and sharp. All her moves were full of power and authority. This curvy young girl, with fluid, sinuous pulses running through her entire body was something new to the swordsman. The way she swung her hips and head, the way she moved her chest, how everything became a circle or an undulation took him by surprise. This new Toph was... sensual, though Sokka did involuntarily duck a couple of times when he saw the arm movements the young girl was using. He had seen them many times before on battle fields and training grounds from here to the Fire Nation.

His friend had always been beautiful to him, but this was a new kind of beauty. This was the beauty of a young woman not the cuteness of a little girl. It was just a beginning to be sure, but what it promised shook the young man to his core. _She's just a kid!_ He told himself. Though it was becoming obvious to him that she was more than that, and soon would be much more.

* * *

The blind girl felt the sweat run down her exposed sides and back. A second drum was added making the beat more complex as the new drummer added ornamentation to Laura's beat. The other musicians joined in adding the various strumming and bowing and plucking of strings along with flutes and recorders and something that buzzed and droned. It was all becoming a jumble of noise to the young girl.

_Hip roll, snake, arms down and shake..._

The blind girl chanted to herself, as she tried to follow the dancer's movements. She knew she was always behind the older girl, since she had to wait to feel what Mirela would do next before doing it herself. It was all going downhill fast.

_Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!_

Toph screamed in her head.

_Oma and Shu! She's spinning!_

Mirela had gotten caught up in the music and was spinning in front of her boyfriend, showing off for him. She had forgotten about the small blind girl that was copying her.

Toph tried to copy the dancer and began to spin, but she quickly became dizzy and nearly toppled over.

_Shit! Shit! Shit!_

The young girl stumbled. She was completely lost. The music was just irritating noise. Her bending was confused and she couldn't even find Mirela to copy her. Blood rushed to her face from embarrassment. Her stomach was jumping violently inside her, and she felt as if she would spew its contents all over everyone around the fire. If she could keep her feet under her, she would run for it and find someplace to hide.

* * *

Sokka could see that his friend was in trouble. She had stopped and was obviously lost. He snatched up the borrowed drum by his side and jumped to his feet.

* * *

Toph had to get away from here, away from the Travelers, away from the camp, away from the fair, away from the town, and most of all away from Meathead. The thought of making a fool of herself in front of Sokka was the worst of the worst. Her eyes burned with unshed tears of embarrassment. She had just dug her toes into the ground ready to run when she felt it. There was a steady slow beat coming up from the ground.

The blind earthbender turned towards the vibrations. Someone was standing to her right, stomping his foot into the ground, giving her a rhythm to follow. She moved towards the pulse coming through the earth to her, using an earthbending kata.

She wasn't dancing now, she was advancing, sliding her feet along the ground, but she was doing it in time to the pounding coming up from the ground. Mirela had told her as long as you move to the drum you were right. Well she was moving to the beat from the ground, even if it was more earthbending than dancing. The familiar movement gave her confidence and the fear started to recede.

The twelve year old sent her bending out and found the young man. She moved in front of him.

_Sokka!_ She told herself.

The swordsman began to beat the drum under his arm in time with his stomping. The young girl could not only feel the rhythm now but she could hear it as well, and began to move her body in time to it. She used her earthbending moves at first, being careful to not release her chi so that she was not actually bending, just making the movements. Then once she was comfortable with the beat she began to add dance moves into the bending katas.

The young man eased up on his foot stomping until, finally, he was just tapping his heal against the ground. But he was hitting the down beat of the music on the borrowed drum with his fist, making sure it was loud and clear to his friend.

Toph could clearly hear the beat of Sokka's drum above the other drums sounding around her. This one she could follow, it was simple and direct. She could tell that Meathead had simplified it and was only hitting on every other down beat. Using Sokka's rhythm as a base, she could now hear the rest of the music as music. She had the beat now and could move to it.

The blind girl no longer felt for Mirela or Laura. She focused all her concentration and her bending on the young man in front of her. She began to dance for him and for no one else.

Sokka led Toph into the music, still tapping his heel but giving her the full rhythm of the music around her, and he began to add counter beats to the down beat. She followed him perfectly.

The bender began to move more freely as her confidence grew. She knew her friend would never leave her alone. He would always be there to support her, to catch her if she fell. She let the beat of his drum move through her.

The young girl began to turn slowly before the young man, swaying her hips, the movement began at her feet and slowly rose up through her legs, to her hips, her stomach, her chest, then up through her head and finally out through her arms which she held straight over her head, as she did her slow turn.

* * *

The swordsman watched as his friend turned in front of him. She moved like a young dragon, swimming through the sky. He had never seen anything so primal and sensual in his life.

_"Tui! Look at that ass!"_ The arrogant teen in Sokka's head commented.

_"Shut up!"_ He told himself.

_"It looks like a ripe pear/apple!" _

_"She's just a kid!"_

_"You just want to bite it!"_

_"She's my friend!"_

_"Don't tell me that, tell your little friend in your pants that!"_

_Oh Tui! Not now!"_ The young man thought as he felt the stirrings in his loin cloth.

Sokka closed his eyes for a second and thought of a really bad time during the first winter that the war party was away from the tribe, when he was alone out on the ice hunting in a storm and had nearly frozen to death, which would have meant the end of the entire village. That killed the budding movement down below. _Thank Tui!_ He sighed with relief, but through it all, he kept pounding out the rhythm for his friend.

* * *

The Water tribesman's beat was so strong that the rest of the musicians began to follow him as well. As he sped up the rhythm they easily followed and the other two dancers followed the music.

* * *

The young girl let the music free her now. She let it flow through her just as she let her chi flow through when she was bending. She swayed and stepped, and turned to the beat of her friend's drum.

* * *

Sokka couldn't take his eyes from the small girl in front of him, even as he increased the beat on the drum. He had never seen anything so beautiful or sensual in his life. This girl had all the grace of Yue and all the power of the Blind Bandit. It was so powerful yet so graceful, so beautiful and yet so physical, that he was completely lost in the dance.

* * *

Toph could feel that the drum was now following her as she danced. There were no names for the movements she was now using, she was just letting her body free itself. Free itself from her Mother's expectations, from Madame Wang's instructions, from her Father's indifference. She had no desire to please them now. Her only desire burned within her, and was focused on the young man in front of her.

* * *

Faster and faster the young bender moved. Striking a new rhythm with the bells and bangles she wore, and her friend followed her, then he took the lead back pulling her along. As she danced they traded the lead back and forth. Each knowing the other so well that the transition was seamless and comfortable for both.

Faster and faster the blind girl danced, sure and confident in the tribesman, her tribesman. Faster and faster the brown skinned drummer played, followed by the other musicians, confident that the girl he played for would thrill him even more.

The blind girl could not lock her eyes on anything, but she could give her heart. She did it now. She locked her heart on the boy in front of her. He became the center of her world. She turned her face towards him, and held it there as long as she could, and her body turned underneath her. Then she spun her head around as fast as she could to feel/hear him there. He became her anchor in the world, for she knew that he would always be there for her. Sokka would never judge her, never want to change her, would always support and love her.

Toph didn't care how he loved her. It didn't matter if it was the love for a friend, a sister, a girl, a lover, or even if it was the same way he loved stewed sea prunes. He loved her and that was all that mattered now, because she loved him with all her heart.

The earthbender began to spin slowly at first then faster and faster. All three dancers were spinning now, but the blue eyed tribesman could only see the blind girl in front of him, silhouetted against the flames of the fire. She spun, her bells ringing, her hair and surcoat flying about her. His heart ached with the beauty of it. His eyes filled with tears at the sensual freedom of her movement. Faster and louder he beat on his drum and stomped the earth until it was no longer enough, and he threw his head back and let out a great whoop of joy, a cry of celebration, and love for the young dancer.

Faster and faster Toph spun until she could go no faster, and finally she heard the warrior's cry from her tribesman. She let her own voice loose, singing out her own joy and love in a high pitched ululating call that filled the night, as she threw herself into his arms.

The two spun together. The borrowed drum bounding along the ground, forgotten by both of them, his strong arms around her chest, hers around his neck, as he lifted her off the ground, and wheeled her around him.

The other dancers were trilling their own calls into the night. The music had stopped, but the cheers and the applause were just starting from the group around the fire. Toph heard none of it.

With her cheek pulled tight against her young man's cheek, all she could feel was his strong arms around her, her own heart pounding in her chest, and the young man's lips on her cheek as he kissed her. All she could hear was her own ragged breathing, and Sokka's voice in her ear as he told her,

"Toph you're amazing! I just love you!"

* * *

Toph finally had gotten her breathing under control, but she was still covered in sweat. It had soaked through her minimal underwear and she could feel it in her blouse and pants as they clung to her wet skin. There were people, mostly young men, all around her, congratulating her, telling her how beautiful she was, what a wonderful job she had done. Occasionally a hand would touch her, which caused her skin to jump a little at the contact, and she would shy away from that young man.

Meathead was off a few steps away apologizing to an older man about dropping the drum, and offering to buy it from him for full price.

"Oh no!" The older man was saying. "It's fine, and besides to see a performance like that was worth more than this old drum ever was."

"I am so sorry!" The blue eyed boy told him. "I didn't mean to drop it but…"

"Forget it." Emilian told him. "Here keep it."

"Oh no!" The tribesman told him, refusing the drum.

"Please!" The drummer insisted, handing the drum back to the younger man. "After a performance like that I don't think that 'Veche Obraz' would be happy with anyone else playing her now."

"So beautiful!" A voice next to the blind girl said, pulling her attention away from her friend.

Through her bending, which caused a dull throb in her bruise, the blind girl could feel that the voice belonged to a young man on her right.

"Thank you." She told him.

Toph felt a strange hand take her own, she immediately pulled her hand away and dropped it by her side.

"Where did you learn to dance like that?" The voice asked.

"Mirela taught me." The girl answered.

The hand, which was apparently attached to the voice, now stroked her bare side, where it showed through the opening of the surcoat, which caused the earthbender to shy away from the contact.

The young girl liked the attention, she enjoyed acclaim, but all these young men telling her how beautiful, and pretty she was, and trying to touch her was new, and although it was nice, and caused a pleasant warmth to come to her cheeks, she didn't like all the touching that seemed to go along with it.

"Well you must be a very good student." The voice told her.

"More than a student." A new young man said, this one standing in front of the bender. "You were doing moves that I've never seen Mirela or Laura use."

"And you made us all stand up and give you our full attention." A third voice told her.

"You're new to the household." The first voice said, as the hand moved from her side to her own hand again and began to tug gently. "We need to show you our hospitality. Please join us, we have a little place set up on the other side of the fire."

"Yes, you can tell us how you learned to dance so beautifully." Number three said, taking her free hand.

"Yes, please join us Misty Green." Number two said. "You are too beautiful to be alone on a cold night like this."

Toph pulled her hands free and dropped them by her sides, trying to cover the opening in her over dress. These three young men sounded nice enough, and they seemed to be genuine in their praise, and in their desire to make her feel welcome, but she was just uncomfortable in this situation. It was entirely new to her. Maybe it was just that the night was becoming cooler, or that the sweat was evaporating off her skin, but the blind girl felt a chill run up her spin and goose flesh rise on her arms.

"I'm fine here." The twelve year old girl told the boys around her.

"Please?" The first boy asked, as a finger stroked her arm.

"It'll be fun." The second told her.

"Maybe you would dance for us?" The first asked. "We would like that. You dance so beautifully."

"Come on." Number three said taking her left hand. "We won't be boring. I promise."

"I promise…" Number one said taking her free hand. "… that we will only sit and tell you how lovely you are."

"I have some baklava my mother made." Number two told her.

"Come on, we'll feed you baklava and dark sweet wine, and worship you." Number one tempted.

The blind girl could hear the smiles and the warmth in the three boys' voices. She wasn't afraid of them, she knew she could earthbend them into next week if she wanted to. And she was tempted, to have three 'Worshipers' instead of one oblivious Meathead, sounded pretty good. But still…

"I'm waiting for my friend." She finally told the three.

"She can come too." Number two said hopefully.

"She's a he!" Laura said with a thump on her drum for emphasis, from behind the boys as she walked up to the quartet.

Toph thought she heard a note of jealousy in the teenage girl's voice.

"Oh would that be the master of the 'immediate surrender'?" Number three asked the young drummer.

"I don't know about that." The pretty teenager answered, stepping between two of the boys to stand by the young bender. "I just know that he fought in the war, and likes to kill stupid young men."

Toph was grateful for the girl's intervention. The drummer seemed much more familiar with these young men and dealing with them, than the twelve year old was.

"Shoo shoo." The teen told the boys, gesturing with her hands. "I'll be over in a minute to try some of that baklava."

"Alright." Number one said, as all three began to move off. "But don't be long."

Laura blew him a kiss, and he mimed catching it and holding it to his heart as he turned away.

The drummer turned to the blind girl and pulled her into a hug.

"You did great!" The older girl told the younger. "You were perfect, and so beautiful. So what did Deep Blue say?"

"Not much…" The young girl told her, turning her head down as they broke the hug to hid the hot blush on her face. "I think he liked it."

"I think it was more than like." The drummer told her.

"Maybe." The twelve year old said, turning away.

"I just wanted to say that was an amazing performance." A woman's voice on the bender's left said.

"Yes. We did a good job didn't we." The drummer answered. "Misty Green this is Kizzy one of our fighters, she's an archer."

"Thank you." Toph replied, bowing.

"No, no." Kizzy said, taking the young girl's hand, and bowing in return. "Thank you. You were beautiful out there."

The blind girl did not pull her hand away. The hand in her own was not soft but calloused, almost like Sokka's, but the calluses were in a different pattern and they interested the young girl. Then the twelve year old felt a finger trace down from her shoulder to the armlet on her left bicep.

"That's interesting." Kizzy said, her finger moving along the outline of the dark metal. "Did you get that at the fair?"

"No, I made it." The bender said pulling her hand free of the woman's.

"Unusual metal, what's it made of?" The archer asked.

"Space metal." The girl answered. "A friend gave it to me."

"Her boyfriend." Laura amplified to the woman in her twenties. "The one who can knock arrows out of the air."

"So you say." Kizzy replied, there was a hint of challenge in her voice. "Maybe you can convince him to give me a demonstration tomorrow."

"Maybe." The blind girl told her.

"Well you were beautiful tonight. I hope to see more of you soon." The archer said bowing and walking away.

"Don't mind Kizzy." The drummer told the bender. "She's a little funny, but very nice for all that."

Toph breathed a sigh of relief with the departure of the archer. It was wonderful that so many people were praising her and liked her, but she preferred her adulation from a little farther off, and with a lot less touching.

"Here comes Deep Blue." Laura whispered in her ear. "Let's see what he has to say."

"Sorry I was gone so long. Oh, hi Laura." The young man said as he walked up with the drum under his arm.

"Hi." The drummer responded, stepping behind the young bender, and taking her by the shoulders the teen pushed the twelve year old towards the handsome young man. "What do you think of Misty Green. Beautiful isn't she?"

"Toph's always beautiful." The boy replied, in a factual tone, as though the truth of the statement was obvious to even the most casual observer.

Toph dropped her face again to hide the blush the complement caused to rush into her cheeks.

"You look really…" The young man went on after a moment's thought. "Old."

The young bender's face shot up, as did one of her eyebrows, the blush replaced by anger, though the color was much the same.

"Old?" The girl asked.

"Well not old like Gran Gran." The boy tried to explain. "I meant older than you normally look."

"And how do I normally look?" The girl asked crossing her arms over her chest.

"Well… I mean… " The boy said rubbing the back of his neck. "Normally you look really young, like a kid."

_Oh that was brilliant!_ Sokka told himself.

"I mean… A gorgeous kid." The boy blurted out. "A really gorgeous, beautiful… girl... ah kid."

"A kid ehhhh?" The bender asked.

"I hear someone calling my name." Laura said. "Be right there boys! Well gotta go!"

The drummer turned and ran to the other side of the fire.

"I mean… you've changed… a lot… from when I first met you is all, which was a long, long time ago." The boy babbled.

"Thanks Stupid." The girl said, as her right arm shot out and her fist connected unerringly with the tribesman's bicep.

"You're welcome." The boy said rubbing his arm.

_That's gonna leave a bruise._ The boy told himself.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well a week late and kind of short, but hey it's me what can I say. I just hope that the dance section worked for all of you. I am going to have to put a fight in soon just for my own peace of mind. I am really intimidated with what I am trying to do with the last couple of chapters. Thanks so much for all the reviews of the last chapter they really help.

Next chapter will have some Tokka time and if I can get it all in, some training fights, and then the chapter after next will have them on the road again, but once again it's me after all, the guy who can stretch a simple lunch into five or six chapters.

Thanks to everyone for sticking with this story.

And a special thank you to everyone who has taken the time and trouble to review. I really appreciate all the encouragement and advice, you people are great!

X

To Mental Traveler; Thanks, I was a little worried that I had spent too much time on the clothes but I wanted the reader to have a real picture of the new Toph. It is good to hear that it worked.

To kat; Thanks, that is great to hear.

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	35. Chapter 35

I'll Walk You Home pt 35

Chapter 11

pt. 4

Healing

* * *

Sokka sat leaning back on the toppled bench, his left arm around Toph's shoulder, looking at Zoltan and Mirela a short distance away.

Toph sat leaning on Sokka, looking at nothing. She had her knees bent and her feet on the ground so she could feel the two Travelers sitting a short distance away.

The blind girl felt the weight and warmth of the young man's arm across her shoulders. She snuggled deeper in under his arm, resting her head against his shoulder. Yes, Meathead was an idiot, but he was her idiot, and besides he was pleasantly warm and comfortable. She reached over and pulled the arm that was around her down across her chest. With her right hand she interlaced her fingers with his, while with her left hand she hugged his bicep between her breasts. _Very pleasantly warm… and the night is getting cold._ She told herself. Toph felt like she could stay this way forever.

_Ice! Freezing! Starving! Dying!_ The water tribesman chanted to himself.

It was just the two couples by the fire now. Everyone else had retreated to their caravans. The first to leave had been Gia, still only wearing one boot. She had dragged Bela off soon after the dancing had ended. Laura was off with her three young men looking for fun. The rest of the Household had faded off into the night.

Zoltan sat with his back against his toppled bench, his feet flat on the ground with his knees raised. Mirela sat between her boyfriend's legs resting her arms on his knees as though they were the arms of a chair and reclining back against his chest, her head nestled beside his, his arms around her waist.

Both couples had turned their makeshift recliners so that they now faced each other by the dying fire.

"So Misty Green..." The dark eyed man asked. "... Are you going to join M'ela as a dancer, or will you continue to gamble your way through the world?"

"Oh, be a dancer Little One." The young woman advised. "You get more boys that way."

"_Did Meathead's heart just speed up?"_ The bender asked herself.

"Oh! So that's why you became a dancer?" The Leader of the Traveler Household asked the woman in his lap.

"Of course!" The dancer replied. "What girl could be satisfied with only one man?"

"Not you to be sure." The handsome man told her, as he shook her playfully in his arms.

Using his left arm, Zoltan pulled the dancers glistening black hair off of her right shoulder and draped it onto the other side of her neck, then he dropped his face down and kissed the beautiful young woman soundly, where her bare neck met her shoulder. She let out a surprised, but happy little squeak at the kiss.

"Well… lots of boys sounds pretty good." The blind girl said thoughtfully.

"_His heart is definitely pounding."_ Toph told herself with a smile.

The small bender could feel it through her back as she lay against the handsome tribesman.

"But gambling is more fun." The young girl decided.

In answer she felt her young man's heart slow down and his body relax.

"Though lots of boys..." Misty Green pondered.

In answer to her musing she felt the boy's body tense and his heart begin to pound again.

"_This is fun!"_ The bender told herself. "You did say lots of boys?"

"Oh yes, lots and lots." The older dancer replied.

Toph felt her young man's heart jump at the suggestion and flashed the older dancer a toothy Blind Bandit grin. Through her bending, the young girl perceived an answering small smile from the woman. The blind girl was glad that Sokka could not see her face.

"Just wait till we get you some new clothes tomorrow." The older girl said. "When you dance for them they will worship you with flowers, and sweets, and they will make up songs about you."

"That doesn't sound toooo bad." The small girl mused, snuggling into the young man a little farther.

_"His heart is really banging!"_ The girl told herself with glee.

"Tomorrow?" The dark eyed man asked.

"Yes Laura and I are taking Misty Green shopping tomorrow." The woman explained. "We're going to turn her into a heartbreaking dancer of the Travelers."

"Too Late!" Sokka said, squeezing the young girl against his chest.

That got a bark of laughter from Zoltan and a confused look from Mirela.

"He means she already is a heartbreaker." The dark eyed man explained to the beautiful woman in his arms. "Just like you."

With that the black haired man kissed the dark eyed woman on her cheek.

"Well if you..." The water tribesman said, rubbing his chin gently on the top of the be-scarved head of the young girl under his arm. "...are going to be shopping tomorrow, maybe Zoltan will be generous enough to teach me how to fight like a Traveler. It sounds like I am going to need to know how."

"Excellent!" The dark eyed man said. "First thing in the morning is the best time. There will be fewer people on the common."

"That's good for me." The watertribe fighter replied.

"You can stay with us tonight." The dancer said. "You will have to share my bed in the caravan, I won't be needing it tonight. It's small but you two probably won't mind that."

Toph dropped her head at this last remark and she felt the young man's heart begin to race at the suggestion. The young man cleared his throat and suggested,

"Well we don't want to put you out."

"Don't worry about me." The young woman told him, wriggling her hips and leaning back on the young man behind her. "I'll be fine. You'll just have to put up with my sister, when she comes stumbling in just before dawn, and steps on you as she climbs up into her bunk."

"We don't..." The young bender began. "... we mostly sleep on the ground."

"Then you can sleep under the caravan." Zoltan suggested. "It will give you more room and will keep the dew off in the morning. I'll get you some blankets."

"That's fine with me." The blue eyed boy said. "If it's ok with you?"

"Yeah," The blind girl agreed. "That'd be good."

"Excellent!" The dark eyed man said.

"While you're shopping…" The boy said archly. "I'll go and get our stuff from the soldiers and, if it's ok with you, take care of the money and such, so we can leave the day after tomorrow in the morning."

"And do some more shopping yourself." The young girl said elbowing her companion.

"Just a little." The boy said defensively.

That got a laugh from the other three by the fire.

"That is if it's ok with you…" The boy nodded to the leader of the Traveler House Hold. "… I mean for us to stay a second night in your camp. We don't want to impose, or overstay our welcome."

"It would be our pleasure to have you stay with us." The dark eyed man replied.

"Thank you." The boy answered. "That is most generous of you, and we…?"

With this last he squeezed the young girl's hand. She answered with a corresponding squeeze in return.

"… are most grateful for your kind hospitality." The dark skinned teen finished.

"Good!" The dancer said with a smile.

Zoltan was impressed with the dignity of the young man across from him. The boy had asked, not expected, had treated the dark eyed man with respect. In the Traveler's world respect given was respect earned. Zoltan liked these mismatched strangers. The boy was clever, he had shown that with how he had handled Gia. From Laura's description they were fighters who were not only skilled but more importantly protected one another. The young girl had taken the clothes and the dancing of his people, and had made it her own. And even in that they had protected and worked with each other. The girl with her dancing, the boy supporting her with his drum. To the Travelers that was the most important thing. Loyalty to each other. In their own way they were travelers like himself and his people.

The two couples sat and enjoyed the quiet of the dying camp fire.

"Well." Zoltan eventually sighed, squeezing the woman in his arms.

"Well!" The dancer mimicked the dark eyed man, turning her face towards his.

"It appears as if all your worshipers have abandoned you." The young man with the gold earrings told her. "And you are stuck with only me."

"Stuck?" The dark eyed dancer asked. "I'll have you know that you had no choice. I used my witchcraft to capture your heart. I use my spells to keep only the best for myself. Isn't that right Misty Green? Our spells are better than any love potion. And we always keep the best for ourselves."

This received a blush and an embarrassed little giggle from the bender, and a raised eyebrow from the water tribesman directed at said blind girl.

"Witchcraft?" The boy asked.

"Yes." The dancer answered for the younger girl. "The most powerful kind."

With that Mirela raised her face and captured the lips of the man she was leaning against. The kiss was long and warm. Toph could feel it using her bending, she could hear it as well, and a deeper blush came to her cheeks as she leaned against Sokka, hugging his arm to her, and thought of wet kisses.

After an embarrassed silence the water tribesman finally said,

"Well if you have to be up early shopping." The boy squeezed the girl in his arms. "And I have to be up early to get beaten up, we should probably get some sleep while we have the chance."

The two Travelers broke their kiss.

"Yes we should all find our beds." The man agreed.

The four rose up onto their feet. Zoltan handed the blanket he had been sitting on to Sokka, then pointing to the one the younger couple had been sharing said,

"Take Gia's blanket. I'm sure she won't mind."

"Thank you." The boy replied, grabbing the second blanket.

The two couples walked away from the fire, the two Travelers towards Zoltan's caravan, and the bender and the warrior towards the dancer's.

* * *

Sokka crawled under the cart and laid out one blanket on the ground and the other on top of it. The two undressed in the open area, beside the cart since it was easier that way. The swordsman untied his hair, and stripped off his weapons and clothes, but he left his pants on, since he was among strangers. He still carefully placed his weapons within easy reach around the makeshift bed. Toph needed help getting out of all the necklaces, bells and bangles the two girls had put on her. The young man noticed his friend's hair smelled of lavender and shined in the dim light of the few lanterns and glow crystals in the camp.

Toph also untied the scarves around her head and chest, and took off the surcoat she was wearing, not wanting to get tangled up in it during the night, which left her in the light pants and the light very high waist sleeveless blouse. Once everything was put away the two crawled under the cart and into the blankets.

The two young people lay on their backs in their makeshift bed, neither one ready to go to sleep.

The boy was thinking about the girl and how much she had changed since he had first met her. Many of those changes now reveled by the dancer's outfit she was wearing.

The girl thinking about the bare-chested boy, and how much he had changed, and not just physically, since she had met him.

"Snoozles?" The girl finally asked the boy, thinking about something Laura had said earlier in the evening. "Do you like… killing?"

"No." The boy said automatically, but then after thinking for a moment he pushed himself up onto his side, and propping himself up on his elbow looked seriously at his friend. "It's not the killing but… well hunting is kind of like solving a puzzle. You try to think faster and better than the game you are hunting. And there is also the physical part of it. You have to be able to track the animal, chase it or sneak up on it. Then you have to use the spear or boomerang or whatever weapon is right. And if you do it all just right, then you have a good kill. You've solved the puzzle, sort of. And that feels good. To know that you did it right. That you got the right answer. I guess it's like trying an earthbending move and having it work. You feel good about solving the puzzle not about killing the animal."

"What about… people?" The girl then asked, turning her face towards the boy's

Sokka rolled onto his back and thought for a time staring up into the shadows under the cart.

"I don't know." He finally answered. "I really hated those sand benders, but I wasn't trying to kill them, well except for that first one. But after that I was just trying to win, you know. I have to say I felt great when I had won. But that was about winning not about killing."

"You had solved the puzzle." The girl offered.

"Yeah I guess." The boy replied, then he rolled up on his side again, and raised himself up to look at his friend. "No, it was more than that. I was glad I had killed those two I knew about. They had hurt you and I hated them for it. The first one, she deserved to die, and I didn't hold back and was glad she was dead. When I found out about the others, well I didn't feel glad, but I didn't feel bad either. They made their choices and I made mine."

Toph found her fingers tracing the line of the young man's jaw. She had not thought about it, she was just doing it. Feeling the hard stubble scattered across his skin. Then she felt the boy's fingers trace a short line across her bare stomach. Her skin jumped involuntarily at the contact, and the boy pulled his hand away with such speed that the blanket fluttered around her. She dropped her hand from his face.

"Sorry." The boy said embarrassed.

"No." The girl said earnestly. "It's ok."

"No." The boy told her apologetically, as he rolled away from her onto his back. "I wasn't thinking."

The two were quiet for a time.

"How're all your bumps and bruises?" The boy eventually asked.

It took a moment before he remembered what his friend called her breasts, that's when all the blood left his brain and rushed to his face, and he was sure he was glowing from the heat. Luckily the young girl was blind and couldn't see it.

"Fine." She answered stroking her own face, apparently unaware of the significance of the nomenclature used by her friend. "The one on my stomach still gives me trouble when I use my bending though. Why, do you want to kiss them and make them all better?"

"If you want." The boy said with a smile.

_"You could offer to bite her ass." _He told himself. "_Shut up!"_

"Well I was thinking about that." The warrior said aloud.

_"Kissing would be good!"_ The girl thought.

"I may be able to do something that could help the bending thing." The boy told her.

"What?" The girl asked.

_"Kissing? I bet kissing would do wonders!" _The girl suggested in her mind.

"Well I was thinking." The handsome young man answered. "If you can block chi, you should be able to unblock it. Right?"

"I guess." The girl answered. _"By kissing!"_

"So if it's ok I'd like to try something." The boy said rolling up onto his side toward the girl.

"You want to solve the puzzle." The girl said with a smile.

"Yeah I guess." The boy responded shyly.

"Everything is a puzzle to you isn't it?" The girl asked.

"Well everything is a puzzle, that's how the world is made." The boy answered defensively.

"Even people?" The girl asked.

"Especially people, but the solution is really difficult to find, since people change all the time." The boy replied.

"So what's the solution, Puzzle Guy?" The girl wanted to know.

"Well Like I say I don't know if it will work but it's worth a try." The boy offered. "I figure maybe I could release the bound up chi by massaging your second chakra and the bruise which is the binding point."

"Ok." The girl acquiesced quietly.

"Ok." The boy said, still on his side scooting up closer to the beautiful young girl. "Here lift your head a second and let me put my arm under it."

Toph did so and rested her head on the warm strong bicep of the young man. Their height difference was such that his lips were near her temple, she could feel his breath as it brushed her face, and her bare arm rested against his strong hard chest and stomach, her knuckles just grazing along the waist band of his pants.

"I have to find your belly button." The boy said apologetically.

The young girl felt the boy's large warm, calloused, hand glide gently onto her stomach. The skin under it jumped at the contact, as the butterflies in her stomach gave up their little dance and started wrestling with one another in wild abandon.

"Sorry." They both said at the flinch.

The boy's hand moved in a slow circle over the girl's stomach. The butterflies turned into flying saber tooth moose lions playing a very violent game of kick ball. The girl's heart, being an avid fan of flying saber tooth moose lion kick ball, began jumping up and down enthusiastically.

The hand stopped over the girl's naval. Then she felt the boy's thumb take up residence in the small depression on her tight stomach. While his thumb stayed fixed in her belly button the warrior's fingers began to slide down her fine skin towards the rolled up waist band of her pants.

"Do you need me to push my pants down?" The girl asked breathlessly, which surprised the blind bender since she was sure she hadn't breathed for at least a minute.

_"YES!"_ The young man's brain shouted.

"No!" The young man's lips said. "This will be fine."

The fingers moved over the waist band and began to search her abdomen. Sokka found the spot he was looking for half way between Toph's naval and her first chakra in her groin. He moved his hand and covered it with his palm removing his thumb from the girl's naval. His fingers then began to search for the bruise a little lower down and to the side. The small girl took a sudden breath at the touch.

"You ok?" The boy asked.

"Yeah, fine." The beautiful girl told him sharply, trying desperately not to let him know the actual effect he was having on her.

The young man curled his fingers into a loose fist, the knuckles resting on the bruise, the palm covering the chakra. The swordsman's wonderfully warm, half naked, body resting against the side of the young bender. His dark hand separated from her white skin by only the light material of her thin pants.

_"Isn't she wearing a loin cloth?"_ The boy wondered. Aloud he told her,

"If this hurts, or bothers you just let me know and I'll stop. You don't have to be a hero. I don't even know if it will work. Ok?"

"Ok, ok" the girl told him, trying to ignore the fire breathing platypus bears that had driven out the flying saber toothed moose lions in her stomach.

Sokka began to gently and slowly move his hand in small circles on the young girl's abdomen, applying light pressure to the two spots. The heat from his hand easily moved through the shear material between her bare skin and his.

Toph felt an answering pleasant tingling warmth begin to grow within her under her friend's hand. As he increased the pressure and the slow massage the warmth and pleasurable sensation inside her grew and spread. Soon the tingle became a slow pulse, in time with the wonderful movement of the boy's hand; the warmth became a small hot coal that burned within her.

As the handsome young man increased the pressure and speed of the massage, Toph could feel her body respond without her bidding. Before long the pulse grew in strength into a fabulous throbbing that moved up and down her body; the coal fanned by the young man's strong hand threw off a small flame that then began to race through her with each throb coming from under the boy's wonderful hand. The heat moved through her legs down into her toes, which curled into the earth beneath the blanket. And up through her stomach to her chest, which caused her heart to leap and fly against her ribs. The wonderful throbbing heat continued on into her throat, causing it to close and pulse in response, completely out of the young girl's control. And finally from her throat up into and out her mouth as a quiet moan.

The blind girl raised her right hand, her fingers touching her lips, which had captured some of the heat that had flown out through them, to prevent any further escapes of sound.

"Ok?" The boy asked, concerned.

"GoodDDD!" The girl answered as a second throb of pleasure escaped and ran through her.

Misty Green closed her eyes and bit down on the finger across her lips as she felt the fire within her grow. The throbbing was stronger now, stronger than her racing heart. The coal was a fire growing under the boy's hand.

The blind girl lay floating in a warm wet sea of pleasure as the young man continued his massage. Her body was beyond her control now. She could only sense the expanding waves of heat and ecstasy throbbing outward from the strong hot hand on her abdomen, as the boy went faster and faster, stronger and stronger.

She was dimly aware that the warrior's forehead was touching her head. She could feel his breath on her cheek. The sound of his breathing was in her ear.

A new, stronger wave of sensation broke from under the massage and sent the flames racing through her, lifting her hips off the ground, pushing the source of the hot center up against the young man's hand. Her toes dug in, her back arched, her ragged breathing became gasps as her mouth opened releasing her teeth marked finger. The blind girl moved both hands to cling to the strong arm above her as a cry escaped her burning lips.

The small bender dropped back onto the blanket but she still clung to her friend's arm as she felt another wave begin to form in the energy center beneath his moving hand. The wave built and built, reinforced by each movement of the young man's hand. It built higher and higher inside her, stronger and stronger until it could no longer be held back. The wave broke, her body arched, only her toes and head still in contact with the ground as she gasped out uncontrollably. She was suspended in the air as the feeling washed through her, muscles beyond her control.

Then she dropped down onto her back, panting desperately now, trying to force air into her lungs, her breasts tight and hot against the thin wrapper, the muscles of her legs shaking. Then she felt a new more powerful wave begin to grow inside her under the increasing pressure of the young man's hand.

The wave built stronger and stronger, the sensation completely over whelming the small girl until she didn't think it possible for her to feel anymore, yet she could because the wave continued to climb up until it finally crested, hot, wet, and unstoppable. The wave crashed through her, liquid fire coursing through every fiber of her body. Her eyes clamped shut. Her heart stopped. Her lungs convulsed as her entire body arched, pushing itself up against the young man beside her, her hands pulling him down on top of her, his strong hot hand trapped between them, unable to move, his name escaping her lips in a cry of amazed wonder and ecstasy.

The fire roiled through her, finally settling and calming, her heart beating again as the fire died, her lungs desperately pulled air in and pushed it out, and her body, completely beyond the young girl's control, settled and fell back to the earth which was her element.

Toph lay quietly, except for a few shuddering spasms that would unexpectedly pass through her. Eventually she was able to regain awareness of the world around her. Her eyes slowly opened. She could feel Sokka's arms around her now, his face tight against her own. There were sounds, creaking and groans of carts and caravans settling and shaking around them.

"You ok?" The boy asked, concern, and something more, evident in his voice.

"… yeah." The girl sighed distractedly, her mind a jumble of feelings and thoughts.

"A little less earthbending please!" A strange male voice called from one of the carts.

"I don't know." A woman's voice called out from a different caravan. "I kind of liked it."

The bender heard the warrior chuckle quietly at this last remark. The camp seemed to settle down again.

"How do you feel? I didn't hurt you did I?" The young man asked the girl in a whisper.

Toph wasn't sure how she felt. She had never felt anything like that in her life. At times it was like really powerful bending, the energy surging through her. At times she thought she was going to die, her body unable to stand any more sensation. And at other times she had been euphoric, floating in a warm sea of pleasure. Right now she felt drained, and relaxed, and free, and like she could sleep forever.

"Fine." The blind girl finally answered sleepily.

"Well let's hope it worked." The warrior remarked.

The young man released his hold on the young girl, pulled the blanket, which had been kicked off of the two of them at some point, back over his friend and himself. Once everything was settled again, he leaned over and rubbing his nose on the nose of the beautiful Misty Green, heartbreaking dancer of the Travelers, said,

"Good night."

Toph languidly rubbed back, she then felt the swordsman roll onto his back beside her, her head still pillowed on his arm. The small bender was asleep before her eyes closed.

* * *

Sokka was fairly certain he was awake. He couldn't be absolutely sure, but he was pretty sure that it was really early, and that he had just woken up from a really nice dream. He felt something tickling his face and smelt lavender. Right… that was probably Toph's hair. He remembered it had smelled of lavender last night. Something Mirela or Laura had brushed into it.

Mirela and Laura? That was it; they were in the Travelers' camp sleeping under a caravan. He did a quick check of his senses. The young bender was sleeping on her side with her back to him. He was snuggled up against her. His left arm, which was completely dead, was under her head. His right arm was wrapped around her, holding her close. Her arm was on top of his, her hand held his wrist.

The blued eyed warrior's right hand was on something soft and warm. Well mostly soft. Whatever was under his hand was covered in cloth and was soft and firm except for this one little bit that was sort of hard. He rubbed his thumb over the hard-ish bit and to his surprise it got harder and pointy-er. His movement also elicited a soft,

"Mmmmmm…"

From his friend. He felt Toph's hand tighten on his wrist and she pulled his hand tighter against the soft thing with the hard center. Then the small bender wriggled her hips and moved back against the young man. Sokka stopped all movement. He suddenly realized why he had woken up and it had nothing to do with his arms or hands.

_This is bad!_ The boy told himself. _This is really really bad, and really, really wrong. She's my friend for Tui's sake! And she's just a kid. This is so wrong!_

_Ice! Snow! Starving! Everybody dying!_ The boy screamed to himself, trying to distract himself from where he was and his current condition. It didn't help. _Crap!_

The fifteen year old boy slowly tried to move his hand away from the so _wonderful, so soft, so firm, so delicious. Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!_ soft/hard thing and down the girl's body. This elicited another,

"Mmmmm…."

From the young girl and a further tightening of her grip on his hand as well as a sleepy, and throaty,

"Snooozles."

From the bender.

_Crap! Crap! Crap!_

Moving even slower he was just able to extract his hand and eventually his arm from the beautiful young girl. The blind girl responded with a discontented,

"Mmmmmmphf…"

But luckily she did not wake up.

The next step was to extricate his dead left arm from under his young friend's head. This took some planning. He lifted her head gently with his now free right hand, while using his elbow he was able to shove the unfeeling arm out of the way, then with extreme care he lowered her head onto the ground.

"Snnooozles?" The small bender asked, moving onto her stomach.

"Gotta go pee." The boy whispered to the back of her head.

"Ok…" The girl said, then dropped off and began to snore quietly.

_Thank Tui!_ The boy thought, slowly crawling out from under the blanket. When he was finally out from under the cart he could feel the cold air on his bare chest and back. He thought about going back for his robe but figured he had to take care of his real problem first. Looking around he saw the cart wheel near at hand. Bending his knees he squatted in front of the wheel, grabbed a spoke in each hand and using his legs, lifted. The cart came off the ground and there was a muffled,

"Whaaaa?" That sounded like a sleepy Laura from inside the caravan.

The strain on his legs had fixed the young man's problem and he gently lowered the wheel back onto the ground. Crawling back under the cart the teen saw the outline of his friend under the blanket and decided against trying to go back to sleep, so he grabbed his top and his weapons belt, crawled out from under the wagon, and decided to find the potty. He really did have to pee.

* * *

_You really are disgusting!_ The boy told himself as he returned from the latrine.

_Yeah I get it!_ He answered himself.

The teen was tired of this conversation, it had been going on since he had woken up, less than an hour ago.

_She's just a kid!_

_Right, I know._

_And did you see how you had to pee?_

_Yeah! I was there!_

_Having to lean against the wall just to get an angle steep enough so you didn't piss all over the walls. That was ridiculous._

_It wasn't any fun for me! _He told himself. _I nearly had to break it off to get it to point down that far._

_Disgusting!_

_Yeah! I get it._

_She's your friend!_

_I know! I know!_

_She trusts you!_

_Yes! I know!_

_And all you can think about is… Just DisgusTING!_

_Hey! It's not like I had a choice or anything. I can't control my dreams!_

_That's no excuse! You're supposed to be better than that!_

"Yeah, I am." The boy said aloud with a sigh.

* * *

Zoltan woke up early. He had the ability to set a mental alarm when he went to bed to get himself up at any desired time the next day, and he had set it last night for predawn for the training session with the young water tribesman today. He carefully got out of bed not wanting to disturb Mirela. It was not difficult since he was used to it and his bed was larger than most of the Travelers since he had one of the larger wagons, and he just had the one bed, which could be pushed up out of the way when it wasn't being used. He washed up and dressed in the dim light coming through the curtains of the small windows of his caravan.

As he was about to leave he took a moment to look down on the beautiful young woman as she lay under the covers. With a sigh he turned and quietly left the caravan and walked out into the camp. He was surprised to see the young stranger already up sitting all alone by the fire.

"Up early." The Traveler said quietly while taking his spot from last night across from the boy.

"Yeah, couldn't sleep." The teen said, waving a stick he had been using to stir the fire.

"Funny I thought you two had a good night." The dark eyed man observed.

"Us?" The boy asked surprised. "Naaa, we're just friends, besides she's just a kid. She doesn't even like me."

"Oh…" The man replied. "Still after the way she danced for you… Well I thought…"

"No. No. She doesn't…" The fifteen year old tried to explain. "She's real young, you know, she doesn't realize what she's doing. I'm just her friend, you know."

"Sorry, I didn't mean anything." The dark eyed man apologized.

"No. No. It's fine." The younger man waved the sentiment off.

The two sat staring at the fire for a time. The younger got up and put a fresh log on the coals and nursed it until it caught fire. The older got the large iron teapot and filled it with water and hung it from the tripod to heat the water.

After regaining their respective seats the blue eyed man told the dark eyed one,

"She doesn't understand the effect she has on me."

"I think most girls don't realize what they do to us." The older man agreed.

"Some do though." The boy observed.

"Oh yes, some definitely know what they're doing." The Traveler asserted.

"They shake their ass in your face all day." The teen said, then switching to a high pitched prissy voice said, "Is that all you ever think about. You're just disgusting, like some awful animal."

That got a laugh from the black haired man.

"Yeah and you're sitting there…" Zoltan added, lifting his fist and forearm into the air. "… with a dick so hard you're ready to shoot your major internal organs out the end of it, and they're all pissed off because they got just what they wanted."

"No fuckin' lie." The water tribesman agreed.

"Tits." The Traveler said dreamily. "I love tits."

"Tits are nice." The younger man agreed.

"There's nothing like tits." The older said in an excited voice, holding his hands open in front of him. Obviously this was a subject he enjoyed. "Nothing feels, or looks, or tastes, as good as tits. Oma! Tits just drive me crazy."

"Don't get me wrong, I love boobs." The boy said.

The two young men sat quietly for a few moments, until the dark skinned teen said,

"But it's more than that, you know. It's stupid little stuff that kills me. Not like it turns me on, well not in that way. But it's dumb stuff that just tears me up, you know. Like when they are just being a girl. I don't mean when they are acting all girly, all giggly and coy but when they are just being themselves. The way they brush their hair, or the look on their faces when they like you, or the way they laugh at your dumb jokes because they really think they are funny, or the way they smile when you do something for them. The way they stand there kind of off center with one hip sticking out with their arms crossed. The way she walks when she's happy, or when she's sad for that matter. You just want to fix it for her, make it all better."

"Or the way she punches you on the arm." The man said looking intently at the blue eyed teen.

"Yeah. Things like that." The teen said with a smile. "It just melts my heart, you know."

"Yeah. I think I understand." The dark eyed man nodded. "But I could do without all the talking, sometimes."

"Yeah! That can get old really fast." The boy agreed with a laugh.

"Misty Green doesn't seem that way." The older of the two observed.

"She's not. She's more like a boy that way." The younger explained.

"You're pretty lucky there." The Traveler told him with a laugh. "She's beautiful, strong, and quiet."

"You got that right!" The swordsman replied. "She's all that and more."

After a moment the boy added,

"But she's not my girlfriend."

"Oh Right!" The older man said. "I forgot that."

"Yeah she doesn't even like me." The blue eyed boy told him.

"Yeah, I could see that." Zoltan said with smirk. "So who's the ass shaker?"

"Sorry?" The water tribesman asked.

"The girl who likes to talk and thinks you're disgusting." Zoltan explained.

"Oh, that's my girlfriend." The fifteen year old answered.

"Where's she?" The Traveler asked.

"She left to go back to her home." The boy replied.

"You broke up?" the dark eyed man asked.

"No." The teen thought a moment. "I don't know. I could tell that she wasn't happy, not for the last couple of months."

"Were you happy?" The older man asked.

"No, I guess not." The boy answered.

"Well sounds like it's over between the two of you." The man observed. "Don't get me wrong, loyalty is great and necessary and all, but if one of you, let alone both of you is unhappy than your not being loyal to the other person. You're just hurting them more."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." The boy said sadly. "It just seems like it's my fault. I should have done something to fix it."

"I bet you're one of those guys who sees everything as a problem that can be fixed." Zoltan said.

"Yeah, I'm the puzzle guy." The tribesman affirmed with a quiet laugh.

"Well puzzle guy, just remember that the answer to the problem may not be one you like." The Traveler told him. "Sometimes the solution is not you and her, but her and somebody else."

"Or me and someone else." The dark skinned teen agreed.

"Exactly!" The dark eyed man told him.

"Like you and Mirela?" The swordsman asked.

"Yes, Mirela is my someone else." Zoltan agreed. "I just hope I'm hers."

"Well it looks to me like you are." The tribesman told him with a smile.

"Well let's hope you're right." The dark eyed man agreed smiling. "And I hope your someone else is close for you. I'd even bet they are closer than you think."

"Let's hope." The boy said.

"Well the water's hot." The older man said, eyeing the steaming tea pot. "Let's have some breakfast then I'm going to kick your ass."

"Sounds good." The boy replied.

* * *

Toph woke up feeling wonderful. She crawled out from under the cart, then immediately crawled back to get her over dress and scarf. The morning air was cold on all that exposed skin. She tied the scarf around her waist instead of up high where it had been last night. Low seemed much more practical and kept her warmer.

She sent her bending out to see if Meathead was nearby, she sort of missed him. When it was just the two of them camping by the road she could always feel him near her and she was just realizing how much she liked having him all to herself.

The earthbending wave returned letting her know that there were only a few people up this early and Meathead wasn't one of them. It wasn't until she had taken that all in that she felt her body relax. She had tensed up automatically waiting for the sharp ache in her bruise but it wasn't there.

She sent a stronger wave out, just to see if there would be any pain, but there was none. She got a good feel for the large encampment around the smaller one she was in. Her bending was even more sensitive than it had been, everything was very clear to her. She could even sense Laura sleeping in the caravan behind her, not as clear as if she had been in a stone building or anything but still. This was great, Meathead had done it.

Then the small bender realized she really had to pee and pee badly.

* * *

"Ok the first thing to learn is how to hold the knife." Zoltan explained handing the young man one of the folding knives used by the Travelers.

"My sword teacher said foot work is always first." Sokka said taking the blade from the older man. "'You have to have a foundation before you can build a tower' he said."

"Yeah I can see that." The older man agreed. "Foot work is important, but let's start with the knife, ok?"

"Oh yeah! Whatever you want. You're the teacher, I'm the student." The boy in blue agreed.

"Excellent." The leader of the House Hold said. "Ok, the grip. Now you want hold it in an easy loose manner, you don't want to choke it to death. You want to be able to move it and change your grip anytime you need to."

The dark eyed fighter illustrated with various grips and maneuvers.

"My sword teacher once told me." The dark skinned fighter said, as he copied the Traveler's movements. "The sword is like a small bird in your hand. If you are afraid of it and you hold it timidly it will fly away, if you hold it with anger in your heart and grip it as you would a club to smash your opponent you will crush the life out of it. But if you hold it firmly and with confidence, letting your head rule your heart, it will sing in your hand."

The young swordsman finished the story by using variations on the demonstration the dark eyed man had given him, adding new grips, and both slight and drastic alterations to the movements, even tossing the knife into the air and snatching it as it fell in a new and more useful way.

Zoltan just stood and looked at the young man for a few seconds, wondering what Pandora's box he was opening.

"So what's next?" Sokka asked.

"We'll switch to the wooden practice knives and try a few simple attacks and blocks." The Traveler answered.

* * *

Toph had asked around the small camp where the potty was. One teenage girl, Nadia, had offered to show her the way. It appeared that Nadia was applying restaurant rules to girls peeing in the camp. When the two had gotten to the women's privies they found there was a line, and joined the end of it behind another girl from the camp, a woman in her twenties.

"Dika," Nadia said to the woman. "You remember Misty Green from last night, right?"

The woman turned at the sound of her name and bowed politely to the young bender, who returned the bow.

Toph stood in line, between the two women, shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. _Why is there always a line?_ The young girl asked herself. She was starting to get desperate.

"Oh here comes Vadoma." The teen age girl said, tapping the blind girl on the shoulder. "She's from our House Hold too. It looks like she had a hell of a night."

The bender felt for the new girl, and could only agree with the teenage Traveler behind her in line. Vadoma, who from her bending Toph could tell was about the same age as Nadia, though shorter than the tall girl, looked as though she was returning from a battle, and not one she had won. The girl was barefoot and limping slightly, or possibly staggering, with her clothes worn haphazardly around her body and her hair in a complete mess. The blind girl sighed with relief, it was so nice to have her bending back without the pain.

"Hi Vad, this is Misty Green." Nadia said to the shorter girl as the new arrival joined the line.

"Morning." Vadoma said bowing to the bender.

The disheveled girl gave a huge yawn than wrapped her arms around herself as she shivered in the cold morning air.

"Well someone had a good time last night." Nadia said to the young girl ahead of her.

"I hope it was me." The barefoot girl said shivering. "'Cause I feel like shit this morning. How'd you do?"

"Pretty good, but not as good as someone I heard last night." The taller answered with a smirk.

"You heard that too?" The other teen asked with a certain amount of wonder, and possibly jealousy.

"Heard it?" Nadia replied with a laugh. "Oma and Shu everybody in camp heard it and felt it."

"It sounded like it was coming from Mirela's and Laura's caravan." Vadoma said, conspiratorially.

"I don't know what he was doing to that poor girl, but I want to find out." Nadia told her friend.

"Poor girl!" Vadoma scoffed. "She sounded pretty lucky last night. Who was she with?"

"I don't know but I have got to meet him." The taller teen answered.

"So do I." the barefoot one said in a throaty voice. "Preferably tonight in my caravan. Do you know anything about him?"

"Just his name." Nadia answered.

"You mean…" Vadoma said with a grin. "Sok…k…k…a…a…A,A,AAAAAA!"

She said this last starting in a low moaning voice that then ended in a gasping high pitched cry. Toph dropped her head down as her cheeks and ears began to burn. She had not realized that anyone had heard her last night.

"That's the one!" The taller teen affirmed laughing.

"Yeah, I wouldn't mind running into him over and over and over." The barefoot girl agreed.

"It may not be a him." The woman in front of Toph said, joining the conversation.

"Him, her, I don't care." Barefoot told the woman. "I just want them to pay me a visit."

"If it was Laura, then he has to be a he." Nadia observed. "And if he does pay you a visit tonight be sure to remember your friends."

"Do you think it was that water tribe boy?" Dika asked.

"You mean Deep Blue?" Vadoma asked.

"That's him." The oldest of the quartet answered.

"Now that's a possibility." The tall teen said, thinking. "After all he is water tribe."

"And the way he was kissing Gia last night." The woman said with a growl. "He's definitely got some skills."

Toph's head shot up at this last statement.

"What happened?" The barefoot girl asked. "I missed it. Deep Blue kissed Gia and survived."

"Oh he not only survived." The woman told the teen, talking over the blind girl's head. "But he very cleverly won a fight by losing it."

"I don't understand." Vadoma said.

"Gia challenged Deep Blue to a fight." Nadia explained.

"But the watertriber surrendered before the fight had even started." Dika went on.

"So for a prize Gia demanded a kiss." The tall teen jumped in, a little miffed at being interrupted in her story.

"But she made him kiss her foot." The woman added, taking the story back again.

"So he kissed her foot?" The disheveled teen asked, with a sour face.

Toph's ears were now burning, and her face had a very dark look on it.

"Oh yeah!" The taller teen answered with a knowing look.

"Oh he kissed her foot alright." The woman said, giving a low suggestive laugh.

"Oma and Shu, did he. He had her half naked and just about passing out by the end of it." Nadia said joining Dika in the leering laugh.

"Well he could be the one that was with Laura last night." Vadoma mused.

"You were with him." Nadia said poking Toph in the back. "What's his name?"

Toph, pulled back from her very dark musings by the nudge, had to think a second before answering,

"Lee, his name is Lee."

"Then it can't be him." The taller teen surmised. "He must be from another House Hold. We'll have to get the story from Laura when we get back to camp, no matter how innocent she tries to play it. We have got to find him!"

"If he pays me a visit, I'll be sure to hang carpets up on the walls of my caravan to deaden the sound." Vadoma told the taller teen, then with a leering smile explained. "Don't want to disturb the neighbors."

"Not me." The woman ahead of Toph said. "If I find him, I'm going to open all the windows so everyone will know that tonight I'm having Sok…k…k…a…a…A…AAAAA!"

The two girls joined her in the last gasping cry, which devolved into raucous laughter by all three. Toph did not join in. She was seriously thinking about burying someone in the ground. She really, really had to pee, and it was almost her turn to use the potty, but after that….

* * *

Gia and Kizzy were walking from the camp to the common area used by all the Travelers for training during day and parties at night. They both had been looking for the water tribesman when they had gotten up that morning, and both had been told he was off training with Zoltan. The two women armed themselves and headed off together for the training ground.

"Looking for a rematch." The archer asked.

"Yes." The tall woman answered.

"You want to win another kiss?" the shorter woman asked in a light tone.

"That's right." The knife fighter replied. "And I'm not going to waste this one on my foot."

"I'd like to see that." The archer commented.

"I don't know." The slim woman said. "It may not be much of a fight."

"Who was talking about watching the fight." Kizzy told her friend with a laugh.

* * *

When the two fighters reached the training ground, they could see that a small crowd had gathered, this was not unusual, but the composition of the crowd was. It was mostly girls and young women.

The two women took the fighter's privilege and walked out onto the field, there they saw the reason for the all the girls interest. Sokka and Zoltan were bouting, both had stripped to the waist and were covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Gia had to admit that it was a lovely sight, as the two handsome, muscular young men charged one another, their polished wooden knives flashing in their hands.

Across from the spectators the archer and the knife woman saw a line of familiar fighters watching the two young men. The two friends joined the end of the line.

"Nicolai." The knife fighter said, nodding to the man ahead of her.

"Gia." The swordsman nodded in reply, then, pointing with his scimitar out onto the field, he told her, "Fresh meat."

"Who has the next fight?" The tall woman asked.

"Pesha." The swordsman said pointing down the long line of fighters. "But Zoltan has to quit the field first and he and Dark Skin have been at it for over an hour already, so we'll be lucky to get any chance against him."

"Shit!" The slim woman said under her breath to Kizzy. "I shaved and everything and now I won't even get a chance."

"Maybe, maybe not." The archer said thoughtfully. "We can always claim House Hold Privilege."

"He's an outsider." Gia whispered to her friend. "It doesn't apply."

"He's a guest of the House Hold." The shorter woman said. "That makes him one of us, we get first crack at him."

"I like it." The knife fighter agreed.

"End of the line boys and girls." Kizzy called out. "He's one of ours, we get first dibs."

Amid a chorus of groans and curses the two women moved to the head of the line.

* * *

Toph was walking fast towards the training ground. _Meathead!_ The small bender told herself. _Her foot! He kissed her foot?_ She was going to kill him. She was going to beat his stupid brains out with a rock.

* * *

"Excellent!" Zoltan called out as he felt Sokka's training knife travel along his ribs.

The Traveler was amazed at how quickly the young warrior had picked up on the fighting style of the Tribe. The boy was fast and clever, a very dangerous combination in an opponent. The leader of the House Hold was also impressed by the endurance of the young man. They had been working for at least an hour and the blue eyed fighter was still full of energy. The younger man even now was hopping around, he couldn't stand still.

Sokka was bouncing from one foot to the other waiting to start another bout. He could not remember ever having this much fun training before. Zoltan was a wonderful teacher and opponent. The dark eyed man never got upset with the water tribesman, no matter how many times the younger man scored a point against him. The Traveler was also great about pointing out weaknesses in the boy's attacks, and parries. He was almost as good a teacher as Piandao, and a lot more fun to play with than Suki ever was.

Zoltan signaled he was ready and the teen charged in again. There was a flurry of attacks and counter attacks between the two fighters, punctuated by the hard clack of the wooden knives striking each other as one parried the other. Then Sokka saw his opening. The Traveler had his right hand high near his own shoulder and shook it once. Zoltan had used this attack twice before and the swordsman recognized it. From the man's stance the teen knew what would be coming next and he was ready for it.

The dark eyed man thrust with his left hand in a low line attack but Sokka parried high, sure enough Zoltan brought the wooden blade up high at the end of the thrust, and the warrior's parry was right on target, batting the older man's hand away and opening him up for the younger man's counter strike, which went unopposed and landed solidly on Zoltan's chest.

"Good!" The dark eyed fighter called, acknowledging the blow.

The two men broke away from each other to end the bout, the younger of the two still bouncing on the balls of his feet, so full of energy he couldn't contain himself.

"You need to be careful." Sokka told the Traveler. "You have a tell that gives you away on that attack."

"What?" The older man asked panting from the exertion.

"You shake your right hand just before you start that attack." The boy answered.

Zoltan shook his head chagrinned. He had realized that you only got one chance with the young swordsman. Once he saw an attack he always remembered it and came up with a counter to it, and the dark eyed man was running out of clever moves.

"You're too good!" The Traveler told the teen.

"I have a great teacher!" The young man answered laughing.

"Yeah!" The dark eyed man said with a laugh. "I taught you how to hold the knife. That was my first mistake."

"Again?" The boy asked taking his stance.

"I'm going to take a break." Zoltan answered. "You can kick someone else's ass for a while."

The Traveler pointed to the line of fighters waiting by the side line. Sokka bowed to his teacher with the utmost respect, then happily tuned to the group and asked,

"Who's next?"

"Me!" Gia said loud and clear stepping forward.

Zoltan tossed the two wooden training knives he had been using to the young woman, who easily snatched them out of the air.

"Great!" The water tribesman said spinning his own wooden knives in the air, then he began to pass them back and forth between his hands.

"So what shall we play for?" Gia asked moving in slowly, her weapons held at the ready.

"How about for fun." The boy suggested with a smile, moving fluidly into his own stance.

"No, no." The tall woman told him. "I'm playing for a kiss."

This received a chorus of "Oooohhss" from the crowd of women and laughs from the assembled fighters.

"Sounds wonderful." The boy exclaimed jumping up and down. "But what if you win?"

This received "Ooooohs" from both sides of the field, but with very different intent by the two groups.

"What do you want if you win?" The slim woman asked with a smirk.

"If I win?" The handsome young man asked with a raised eyebrow. "When I win you have to show me where you keep all those knives you carry."

That got a response of cheers from the line of fighters. Speculation was rife among her peers as to just how many, and where she carried all her blades.

Before Gia could respond, Sokka felt a very familiar trembling in the earth. He pulled his feet together and bent his knees to absorb the shock, but was surprised when it was the tall woman who was launched by the earth pillar that suddenly erupted from the ground. She was caught by the group of fighters as she landed in their midst.

The dark skinned teen turned and as expected he saw the blind earthbender standing on the field.

"MEATHEAD! YOU'RE MINE!" Toph shouted cracking her knuckles.

_"Ooooo… Kayyyyy…"_ The young man thought. _"This is probably going to hurt."_

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well not too late but it is very long. I had a hard time with this chapter (I know I say that a lot :-) and we still didn't get a fight. I was able to get a little Tokka time in there and at least Toph got her chi unblocked, which is all that happened, honest, and Sokka learned the importance of early morning exercise. I had to rewrite it a few times and I hope it came out ok. The next chapter will start with a fight so there is something.

Thanks to everyone for sticking with this story.

And a special thank you to everyone who has taken the time and trouble to review. I really appreciate all the encouragement and advice, you people are great!

To Mental Traveler; Glad you enjoyed it. Please let me know how Sokka Style works for you. I am very curious.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	36. Chapter 36

I'll Walk You Home pt 36

Chapter 12

pt. 1

Heart

* * *

The fifteen year old tossed the training knives to the Traveler who caught them easily.

_Now what did I do?_ The young man asked himself, as he began to unbuckle his leg brace. _This is so not my fault_.

The teen watched as the assembled fighters helped Gia back up onto her feet. _Well it looks like the chi block is gone._ He told himself, _so that can't be it._

A little over one hundred paces away, the blind bender waited impatiently. _He is so going to pay!_ She told herself.

Sokka looked at his cache of weapons which lay by the corner of the field. His sword, club, or machete could be used for blocking missiles, but given the small size of the field and the close confines of the nearby camp, he didn't think Toph would actually be throwing a lot of stuff at him. He was not good enough with his throwing knives to use them as Mai did to pin the blind girl by her clothing, which left him his boomerang as his only offensive weapon.

Boomerang was his best weapon against the bender. She had a very hard time feeling it once it was in the air since it did not travel in a straight line. If he threw it while he was in the air she would have no idea where it was except for the sound.

Shortly after the war Sokka had been training against Toph and while dodging everything the blind bender had been throwing at him, no easy task, he had launched himself into the air and cast boomerang at her. He had thrown it in a high looping arc, and on its return it had smashed into the back of the small girl's head, stunning her, and knocking her to the ground.

The tribesman had dropped his weapons, and with his heart in his mouth, had rushed to his fallen friend, scooped her up, and began to frantically search for Katara in the hope that his sister could heal his friend. The blind girl had come too, dazed and confused, in the young man's arms. In her own panic she had bitten his left arm, sinking her teeth in until she tasted blood. Surprised, the tribesman had dropped his friend, which had been a big mistake; it took him over half an hour to dig himself out of the ground.

By the time the young man was on the surface again his friend was nowhere to be seen. The young girl had not spoken to him for a week after that, even after his arm had become infected and he was laid up in bed for a few days. His arm still bore the marks of her teeth. He would wear them until the day he died. No, he would never use boomerang on his friend ever again. There was too much danger of her being injured, which would break the boy's heart.

Sokka's only other chance was to try to close with the blind bender, and using the technique taught to him by Ty Lee, try to block Toph's chi. The irony was not lost on him. _Or is that a paradox?_ He asked himself. _Or possibly it could be drollery?_

"I'M WAITING!" Toph shouted, from the other end of the field.

"Be right there!" The young man answered, putting the brace with the rest of his equipment.

"Can you watch my stuff for me?" The blue eyed boy asked the dark eyed man standing nearby.

"Of course." Zoltan answered.

The dark skinned warrior was going to need all the speed he could muster to have any chance, which he had to admit was slim to none, and the brace would only slow him down. Thinking along the same lines, the young man untied the draw string to his pants and turning his back on the assembled fighters began to reach into his leggings, but seeing the assembly of girls on his other side, the young man turned back to the fighters. They had at least seen this before, probably, even if some of them were women.

The blue eyed teen reached into his leggings, and amid the jibes and smirks of his fellow fighters, arranged himself, he then pulled his loin cloth tight and tied the ends of the cloth to the waist band. He didn't want anything getting in his way while he ran. He then retied the draw string of his pants, and dropped to the ground in a runner's starting stance.

"Ready!" The young man called out.

"Goody!" The blind girl responded with a grin, taking a horse riding stance.

The crowd on both sides waited breathlessly. And waited, and waited. Nothing happened for nearly a minute and the fighters especially were getting restless.

The dark skinned teen started, catching all the watchers by surprise, but not Toph, he was forced to leap high into the air, as a barrier suddenly rose out of the ground in front of him. His hands caught the top and he vaulted over it before it had even stopped rising.

Instead of diving straight over the barrier, the tribesman vaulted to the side barely avoiding the pit that, at a gesture from the young bender, had opened on the opposite side of the wall. His legs were pumping before he even hit the ground and his run had begun.

"Son of a bitch is fast." Kizzy noted with a smile.

Gia nodded in agreement as she watched the young man.

Sokka was not running at his friend, but at an angle, almost as if he was running off of the field. He could not run in a straight line, if he did the blind girl would easily get him. The water tribe teen was like a ship heading into the wind, tacking back and forth, left and right, in order to reach his goal.

Toph advanced a step, her right arm shooting out in a low hook, fingers extended.

The tribesman felt the tremble in the earth and dropped rolling on his side, letting his momentum carry him under the five needle sharp earth spires that had suddenly risen at an angle from the ground aimed where his chest had been. Grabbing the shaft of one of the spires he pulled himself up and through the gap between it and its fellow, and running along the base of the five spires, charged off at a new angle this time towards the small bender.

"Oma and Shu!" Nikolai said in awe. "I would have been a shish ka bob on that one!"

The fighter's comment got appreciative laughs from the other fighters standing near him. Both groups of watchers began to move down the field to keep the action in view. This was becoming interesting.

_Meathead's good!_ Toph told herself with a smile. She loved playing with Sokka. Twinkle Toes was ok, but he was always cheating using airbending to stay off the ground. Sugar Queen and Sparky would just stand there and bash at her with their bending, but Sokka would run. She never knew which direction the tribesman would take or how he would react. It was a joy to play with him. She really had to be alert and using her best whenever she played with her friend, _who just happened to be a boy, definitely not her boy-friend_.

_Cut left!_ The boy told himself._ Not yet, wait for the trembling in the earth!_ The rational part of his mind answered. _Toph was the best!_ He told himself. It was always fun to play with her. He had to give his best, splitting his awareness between her, so he could see what form she was using in her earthbending, and the ground ahead of and around him. She was a master at making traps of quicksand and pits in front of him as he ran. She was the best bender in the world and he had to give his best to her if he was going to play.

The blind girl stomped her right foot to the ground and brought her arms down, out, up, and around, her fingers curling at the top of the arc.

The tribesman didn't know the form the bender was using, but he felt the earth tremble under his pounding feet. He cut left, his right leg being the stronger it was easier to go left, but it was too late. Two large earth waves rose up out of the ground in the form of a funnel, open at his end and joining as they approached the blind girl. The waves crashed together at the apex and rolled down towards the runner.

Sokka was trapped and had no way out. If he tried to stop and turn it would be too late, so he turned towards the left hand wave running up the increasing slope, he jumped up towards the right hand wave and kicked off of it, the kick carried him through the closing gap between the two, and over the crest of the left hand wave just as the two crashed together. He slid on his chest, down the outside slope of the wave, avoiding the largest pieces of the rubble, but grabbing two small stones as he dug his hands in, flipping himself over and landing on his feet. He took off running again, this time at an angle to the left almost away from the small bender.

"Oma, that had to hurt!" Nikolai commented as he saw the young man slide on his bare skin.

There was sympathy, tinged with admiration in the man's voice. His remark earned nods from the fighters around him. None of the fighters of the Travelers were benders and they had all begun to quietly root for the young non bender.

_Cut right!_ The boy told himself as he felt the ground tremble underneath him, and he saw a small tell tale cloud of dust rise from the field in front of him. It was probably a softened section of earth the young girl had created to trap him. He pushed of with his weaker left leg as he made the sharp turn. He was now heading more directly for the small bender.

The young man's left leg was much improved with all the walking and the running he had done in just the last couple of weeks, but it was still weaker than his right, and his right turns were not as sharp as his left, since he had to kick off the turns using his opposite leg.

"Duck!" Sokka shouted as he threw the stone in his right hand at the small girl.

The teen always warned his friend when he threw anything at her, after the boomerang incident, even though with stones, she would have no problem feeling them coming at her. He always threw hard and fast trying to hit her. She could sense a stone that was meant to miss and would simply ignore it. If he was going to distract her and break her earthbending, he had to mean to hit her, which he didn't like, for fear that he actually would, but otherwise she would be pissed that he hadn't really tried.

Toph felt the stone coming at her. _Good one!_ She told herself as she felt it fly right towards her chest. Meathead always aimed for her chest, since it was easier for her to avoid head shots. With chest and stomach shots she had to move her whole body out of the way or block them. She pulled up a small barrier of compressed earth and blocked the stone.

"You want to throw things? Try this!" The blind bender shouted with a grin, punching the barrier at the teen as he ran.

_Fuck!_ The dark skinned fighter cursed to himself, as he threw himself down and skidded along the ground on his bare back, under the flying block. He really didn't think the bender would be shooting at him.

There were gasps of fear and a scream from the crowd of girls that had been watching the battle as the block of compressed earth missed the boy and continued to hurtle straight towards them. With a gesture from the blind girl the block disintegrated before reaching the watchers, covering them in dust.

_This is great!_ The blind girl told herself. She was really enjoying this. Her bending hadn't felt this good since before entering the desert, maybe not ever. Whatever Stupid had done last night had really worked and her sense and ability to bend felt wonderful. She had complete control of her element and she knew just where he was. Her eyebrows furrowed as she felt for the young man.

Sokka was on his feet again and moving before the small girl could focus on him.

_What the fuck is he doing?_ The Blind Bandit asked herself.

"He's running backwards!" Pesha, a large spearman standing with the fighters said.

The dark skinned teen was technically retreating the way a swordsman backs away from an opponent, but he was doing it at high speed and not just for one or two steps as he would in a fight.

"Shit!" Nikolai said in wonder. "He retreats faster than I can advance!"

"Shit is right!" Gia echoed the man with the scimitar.

The small bender was confused by this unusual movement but only for a second. She kicked up three blocks of earth and shot them at her friend. _Meathead is fucking crazy!_ She told herself, reveling in her friend's insanity.

The teen saw the blocks headed his way. They were aimed at his legs. He wouldn't be able to duck under these. He turned and ran straight for them, and straight for the Blind Bandit. At the last possible instant he dove over the blocks, but he angled the dive so he would land to the right of them, thus avoiding the pit his friend had just opened for him, rolled and was back up on his feet running again. He knew that the bender would have to deal with the blocks so he had a second or two to move in on her, he turned towards the girl.

With a gesture Toph pulverized the blocks she had punched at her friend. She knew he would avoid them and her pit as well. This was Sokka after all. But she had another trap for him. She would blind him. She stomped her foot to the ground and shot her fists out, a cloud of dust erupted from the field around the young man.

As soon as the tribesman saw the dust begin to rise he shut his eyes tight and using Sifu Piandao's training pulled up the last image he had in his mind of the ground ahead of him. Using the image to navigate he continued to run full out, then at the right moment, he turned towards the bender who was his goal.

"Duck!" The warrior shouted, throwing his last stone, while still running blindly through the dust.

_Oma!_ Toph cursed as she dodged the stone that came straight for her. _Stupid didn't even slow down! _That had caught her off guard.

As soon as Sokka smelt clean air he opened his eyes and saw Toph right before him. He was nearly there. He was running on adrenaline now, but he called on what reserves he had to run faster. Just one or two more seconds and he would be on top of her.

Toph kicked her right foot down and forward creating and riding a small earth wave away from the teen coming right at her. As the wave ran out she brought her fists down in a full power move.

Sokka saw the blind girl almost fly away from him, he then saw the pit open up in front of him. He had no time to stop or turn so he threw himself into the air trying to land on the other side.

_Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!_ He cursed in his head. He was going to be short. His chest hit the opposite side of the pit, knocking what little air he had left out of his lungs. His hands scrabbled at the edge trying to find a grip to pull himself out. He finally got a hand hold, and was dragging himself up over the edge when he felt the earth close on his wrists. He looked up to see the Blind Bandit a short distance away with her hands in the crane beak form. He was trapped.

The young man pulled and twisted, but for all his straining it was pointless. His hands were held firm. There was nothing that muscle and sinew could do against the greatest bender in the world.

Sokka pulled himself the rest of the way out of the pit and knelt before the victor, sitting back on his heels, his hands still bound to the ground, his chest heaving, pulling as much air as he could into his starving lungs, his muscles pushing against his taught skin, desperate for the oxygen in his blood, his hair down, the hair tie lost as he had skidded under the first block of earth, his skin covered in bruises, scrapes, dirt, sweat, and blood. His blue eyes found her face, and with a small smile he panted,

"Uncle… You've… got… me… I'm all… yours."

The blind girl wanted to rush to him and just hug him to death. She wanted to pull him so close no one would be able to tell where one began and the other ended. She wanted to kiss him and hold him forever. He was just the most amazing, and special boy in the world. She felt her heart melt in her chest.

"Excellent!" Zoltan said in a quiet voice.

The dark eyed man, with the rest of the fighters, had moved down to watch the end of the fight and, along with the female watchers on the other side, the two groups had gathered close to see the finish.

"Amazing!" Nikolai the swordsman said, as he began to clap his hands.

Others took up the applause from both groups. Toph raised her hands above her head, in her Blind Bandit pose to acknowledge the acclaim.

"I've never seen anything like that, son." An older fighter said.

"No one has." Pesha the spearman agreed, clapping his hands. "Dark Skin, you are amazing."

"Are you alright?" One of the women watchers called out to the young man.

"Amazing!" Gia proclaimed.

"Beautiful! Just beautiful!" One of the teenage girls said with tears in her voice.

The young warrior did not register the praise or acknowledge it. He was distracted by the blind girl in front of him, whose arms were raised over her head in victory. She was so beautiful, so proud, so talented, so smart, so amazing, so curvy, and her pants clung to her so perfectly, and her blouse really showed off her… _Oh Tui not now!_ The fifteen year old cursed. _Cold, freezing, starving._ He told himself as he strained all his muscles against his restraints, using his thigh muscles to try and raise himself. That helped but it didn't kill the problem completely. Luckily the tightly cinched loin cloth kept the problem from being too obvious, unless you were consciously looking for it.

"Is there a problem?" Kizzy asked her taller companion.

The archer had noticed that the slim woman beside her was no longer applauding, but was staring intently at the water tribe warrior on his knees a few paces away.

"No problem that I can see." Gia replied dreamily, then coming to herself she began to applaud again, and then added a short trill of encouragement.

The other women fighters joined her in her trill, the male fighters cheered and shouted their approval of the young man. The teenage girls on the opposite side added their trills to those of the fighters.

Toph realized that no one was looking at her. All their praise and applause was directed towards her friend. _My friend who had just lost, in case you hadn't noticed!_ She thought with ill grace. Meathead was good, but she had still won, and she had used some pretty sweet moves on him too. The young girl lowered her arms and placed her fists on her hips as a scowl crawled onto her face.

"He would have won if she hadn't cheated at the end." One of the young women told her companion.

"You know benders." The girl standing next to the first replied.

That was it. The blind girl had heard the quiet conversation between the two onlookers. She dropped her hands by her sides and strode the few steps between herself and the teenage warrior, who was still straining mightily against his restraints. The small crowd grew silent to hear the finale of the fight.

"Loser!" The small bender said crossing her arms across her chest.

"Obviously!" The fifteen year old replied, with a large smile on his face. "You're the greatest bender who has ever, or will ever live. I didn't stand a chance and never will."

There was a small smattering of applause and a few sighs from the young women at the gallantry of the young warrior. This did not improve the young bender's mood in the slightest.

The blind girl planted her right foot in front of the tribesman. This, of course necessitated her leg, clad in the thin, shear silk of her loose pants to come out from under the surcoat she was wearing and reveal itself to the young man, who for some reason increased his attempt to break free from his restraints just then.

With a gesture the bender raised her foot slightly on a small, short earth pillar. Then with a flick of her wrists the ground holding the blue eyed fighter's hands shattered and he almost literally popped off of the ground with nothing to resist his straining muscles.

"Kiss it!" The twelve year old girl told the boy.

"If that's all you wanted, you just needed to ask." The dark skinned teen proclaimed. "You could have saved us both a lot of time and trouble."

"Less talk, more kissing!" The girl ordered.

"My pleasure." The young man replied.

_Why is she still pissed at me, she won?_ Sokka asked himself as he reached out for the young girl's limb. Without the bells and bangles to hold it closed the bottom of the bender's pants had dragged in the dirt, so she had rolled both up to the top of her calves in order to keep them out of the way. The fifteen year old gently placed his right hand on the young girl's heel while placing his left on the top of her foot.

Toph's foot was filthy. Well her feet were always filthy. The young man brushed the loose bits off, with his dirty hand, he then lowered his head.

There is an interesting but little known theory about chi paths that is only discussed by philosophers and the high monks of the air nomads. The theory states that once a path is open it is open, energy and sensation pass unobstructed in both directions. The same is true of chakras. Once it is open energy moves freely through it, especially if it has been recently blocked for some reason. It over compensates by opening especially wide for some time after the blockage is removed.

A corollary to the open path theory states that paths and chakras that have been recently used retain a residual energy that amplifies anything moving through them. The more powerful the chi sent down the path or chakra at the time of use results in more residual energy and a greater amplification.

The young bender had never heard of the theory or its corollary, but she was about to find out that they both understated the actuality of the situation.

The twelve year old felt the young man's hand tenderly brush the top of her foot. She could feel the flying saber tooth moose lions begin to assemble in her stomach for a re-match. Her heart began jumping for joy.

As the young man lowered his head, Toph could feel each strand of the boy's loose hair as it trailed across her skin. That was when the giant badger moles began the trapeze act over the kick ball game. She felt his warm moist lips make contact as he began the kiss. It was gentle, yet strong, there was no tentativeness about it. It was loving and passionate while still being chaste and caring. It was the kiss of someone that truly loved her. That's when the flying fire breathing lion turtles joined the circus.

Sokka heard the earth pillar under the girl's foot crack, then he felt it shatter, the debris knocking him back as the young girl snatched her foot out of his grasp.

The small girl stood stunned and silent, her face, neck, and ears bright red, her chest heaving as the waves of fire passed through her. It was nowhere near as strong as it had been last night, but between the memory and the reality, it was impossible for the twelve year old to distinguish the two.

"Toph?" The fifteen year old asked, surprise and concern evident in his voice.

The young girl felt tears sting her eyes. _He did that with another girl!_ She thought. _He kissed that stupid skinny assed Gia like that?_ Her foot still tingled. Hell, her whole leg was tingling. And Stupid had shared that with someone else. _"He had her half naked and nearly passing out"_

"Are you ok?" The boy asked starting to rise from his knees.

"I'm fine!" The girl told him, holding back her tears. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I'm sorry…" The tribesman began.

"Shut up!" The blind bender yelled. "You stupid… stupid… foot kisser you!"

Toph stomped her foot on the ground and before Sokka could even make a sound he was swallowed completely by the earth under him.

The bender suddenly became aware of everyone in the small crowd staring at her. She turned and fled, hot tears running down her cheeks.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

I tried to load this up on Wednesday but there were problems with FF and I kept getting an error message everytime I tried to edit the story so it's not my fault it is so late, well not all my fault.

I have to give a big Thank You to CrazyExtreme who told me how to bypass the problem and get the chapter up. You should check out his story "The Seeds We Sow". He is an excellent writer with an interesting Sokka story in an AU distopian Avatar world.

A little late and a short chapter but I did not want to delute the fight between Toph and Sokka with a long chapter.

I hope the fight between Toph and Sokka lived up to people's expectations, though I don't see how any writer could really do justice to those two fighting.

I know I said I would have them on the road at the end of this chapter, but I don't want to short change their time in the camp, and the shopping and festivities will be important to the later chapters and to their relationship, so there will be one more chapter in camp before they get on the road again.

Thanks to everyone for sticking with this story.

And a special thank you to everyone who has taken the time and trouble to review. I really appreciate all the encouragement and advice, you people are great! I have only been doing this for about two years now and from my small number of stories you can see that I am still a novice. All of your help and encouragement is what has kept me going and hopefully improving.

I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed anyone please accept my apologies.

X

To Anonymous Werewolf; Thank you, I'm glad you are still following and enjoying the story.

To siml; Wow! Thank you so much. That is very kind and generous of you. I only hope that I won't disappoint you with the later chapters.

To Mental Traveler; Thanks, yeah you have to keep your ears open waiting for the potty. You reviewers are more than a small part to the story. You guys are great and keep me going.

To Sange; Sorry, not a whole lot of internal dialogue in this one but Sokka will have a stern talking to himself soon. :-)

To Kagey; Thanks for both of your reviews. To know that people are enjoying the story is the best payment of all. About the Fanart, I would be deeply honored if you chose to do something based off of my story. I would run around screaming and show it to all my friends. (And I'm not kidding!)

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	37. Chapter 37

I'll Walk You Home pt 37

Chapter 12

pt. 2

Heart

* * *

The fighters were the first to react, rushing to the spot where the dark teen had been, and using their hands, began to dig for him. It took almost a minute, with the young girls hovering around the diggers offering encouragement and voicing concern for the buried teen, before they uncovered his head and he was able to take a breath. It took a few more minutes before they were able to get him out of the ground.

As soon as the young man was on his feet he wanted to go after the blind girl, but Zoltan was able to convince him that it would be better to give her some time to herself. So instead of running to catch up to his friend the boy sat down and caught his breath.

The fighters, men and women alike, slapping him on his shoulders and back, congratulated him on his performance against the bender. The young tribesman got the feeling that benders were not held in high regard among the Travelers. It was almost as if benders cheated when they used their talents.

The teenage girls were next to offer their congratulations to and their sympathy for the young man. Sokka got painfully to his feet as the girls gathered around him. It only seemed polite.

"You poor thing." A girl about Sokka's own age said, tracing a bruise on his stomach with one of her fingers. "Are you alright?"

"Fine." The boy answered, gently moving the wandering finger away from his skin.

"You would have won if she hadn't cheated at the end." A second girl said from behind him, as he felt a small cool hand stroke the muscles of his shoulders.

"She didn't cheat!" Sokka told her, turning to the girl who had spoken.

"She moved away from you." A third girl said stroking his arm.

"Of course she did!" The boy said, as he backed up a step from all the hands that were exploring his skin. "It would have been silly for her to have just stood there and let me grab her."

"I wouldn't have moved." A new older voice said from the warrior's left side.

The teen turned and saw a strikingly lovely woman, a few years older than he was looking at him with her dark smoldering eyes. She at least wasn't touching him, well not with her hands.

"I would have stood my ground." The woman said with a smile. "Even if it meant you would grab me with those big strong arms of yours."

"Then you would have lost." The young man told her.

"Sometimes you don't mind losing to the right man." The woman replied, the sly smile never leaving her face.

"Aaa… Yeah…" The blue eyed warrior said confusion evident in his tone. "But my friend doesn't like to lose."

"With the right man." The woman remarked. "You can both win."

"Your friend?" One of the younger girls asked.

"Yes." The boy said tearing his eyes away from the woman's, and turning to the teenager who had spoken.

"Oh…" The girl said dropping her face, disappointment evident in her manner.

"Well if you want to have some fun tonight…" The girl who had been behind him spoke then. "… you should come to our camp tonight. We are having a last night party. We're over there." She pointed to the west. "Just look for the banner with the Golden Griffin on it. You would be more than welcome."

"Or you can join us tonight." The teen who had been in front of him spoke up, pointing to the north. "There will be singing, dancing, food and wine. Just look for the banner of the rampant lion."

With this last the girl turned sideways to the warrior, and raising her hands as if she were pawing the air gave a low growl. The young man had to admit she looked pretty cute as a lion.

"Well thank you very much." The boy said, stepping back and bowing to the assembly of young women. "I'm not sure I will be able to walk tonight but I will certainly try to join you if I can."

"Well join me tonight…" The woman said, as her dark eyes roamed over the young man. "… and I'll make sure you won't have to use your legs at all. Just ask for Nadya."

"Thank you." The boy said bowing, as the small group around him bowed and moved away.

The young man sighed with relief. He was finally alone on the field. He looked off to where his friend had run away from him. He did not notice Zoltan approach him.

"Everything ok?" The dark eyed man asked.

"I wish I knew." The boy replied still looking into the camp.

"She'll be fine, just give her some time." The older of the two said.

"I hope so." The boy said, turning to the Traveler.

"Come on, let's get cleaned up and back to camp." The man told him.

"I give up." The boy said, shaking his head as he walked along. "I will never understand girls."

"That is the first step to wisdom." The dark eyed man said with a smile, clapping the younger man on the shoulder.

Zoltan led his new friend up the field towards where they had deposited their weapons and clothes. They could see Gia and Kizzy waiting for them.

* * *

Toph walked slowly into the camp of Zoltan's Household. The tears had been wiped from her face and her heart beat was under control. Her anger had yet to fade.

The blind girl walked over to the caravan she had slept under, and found Mirela, with a cup in her hand, sitting in the doorway at the back. Laura was nearby, lying on a blanket spread across the ground.

"Good morning Little One." The dancer greeted the bender. "Where have you been so early this morning?"

"Kicking Stupid's ass!" The young girl told the elder sister, venom evident in the small girl's voice.

_O… kay…_ The dancer thought. _Better stay away from that subject._ After what she had heard and felt last night she was surprised by the bender's words and tone. Then Mirela remembered the story, she had heard around the fire as she had gotten hot water earlier, about Deep Blue and Gia. Misty Green must have heard the story as well and was not as amused as the rest of the camp had been.

"What's wrong with Laura?" The blind bender asked.

"She had a good time." The woman replied.

"Kill me now…" The drummer moaned from the blanket. "… pleeeease."

"Tea?" The dancer asked, getting up and going to a small table hinged to the side of the cart.

"Yeah." Toph replied joining the elder sister by the cart.

The young girl heard the bangles and bells of the dancer ringing and tinkling as she walked. The two sisters made music anytime they moved. The sound reminded the girl of all the loaned items she had received last night. With a few small gestures the bender called up a small mound of earth that moved from under the cart to just below the girl's outstretched hand. The young girl took the jewelry and scarf offered to her by her element, and then, with a small pat, caused the mound to sink down into the earth again.

Mirela had seen earthbending before but never anything like the display the small girl had just performed. The blind girl had done it so effortlessly, so naturally. There had been no strain, or grand gestures as the dancer had seen in the past. It was almost as if the earth was a loving, dotting pet, doing whatever the girl asked for and then begging to be scratched behind the ears.

The woman accepted the items from the young girl and awkwardly handed her a cup of tea in return. The dancer climbed into the caravan while calling out,

"I've made some porridge for breakfast."

"Uhhhhhhh…" The drummer moaned from her blanket. "I'll have mine with lots of honey and cinnamon."

"Then we can go shopping." The eldest called from inside the cart.

"Shopping…" The drummer echoed as she sat up.

The way the teenager said the word, it was a strange cross between a poem and a prayer.

_She's just like Meathead!_ Toph thought sipping her tea. The blind girl had never understood the tribesman's fascination with shopping, and the drummer was even worse. She liked shopping for clothes. Clothing should be simple, functional, and cover everything. If it did all that who cared what it looked like.

Laura stood up and holding her blanket around her, stumbled over to the table, sighed, and poured herself a cup of tea. Then her whole demeanor changed as an idea came to her.

"Misty Green, you're rich!" The teen giggled. "You can afford the best of everything. Oh… this will be so much fun. We will dress you in honey and cinnamon and the boys will not be able to resist you."

"Boys?" The blind girl asked.

"Oh yes!" The drummer said dreamily. "They'll be lining up just to see you. They'll challenge each other to duals for the privilege of kissing your hand."

"Or my foot?" The small girl asked in a thoughtful tone.

"Yes!" Laura said, giggling and hugging herself at the thought. "They'll kill each other just to kiss your feet."

"That doesn't sound too bad." The blind bender said, as an evil little grin pushed itself onto her face.

"Lots of boys!" The drummer told her.

"Lots of boys fighting to kiss my feet..." The twelve year old said quietly, as the little grin began to spread itself all over the young girl's face.

* * *

Sokka got his gear together, strapping his throwing knives to his heavy sword belt with his other weapons, and hanging it from his right shoulder. His clothes, money belt, and leg brace he collected in his left hand. He decided not to wear his robe since he was covered in dirt and blood and didn't want to soil his last wearable top, he had decided, after the restaurant in My Lot, that he really shouldn't wear his old clothes again except in an emergency.

Gia offered to help him carry all his equipment, but the young man felt it was only right that he carry what was his, but thanked the slim woman for the offer.

Once they were all ready, Zoltan began to lead the party of four off the field.

"Sorry for all the damage." The blue eyed teen apologized, indicating the training ground.

"Oh I wouldn't worry about it." The dark eyed man told him.

"I think it's an improvement." The tall woman said, stopping and looking out over the field.

The small party all turned and watched as the fighters from earlier in the day were scrambling over the barriers, jumping in and out of, as well as over the pits that had been created. They all seemed to be having a very good time, calling out to, and criticizing each others' technique.

"None are as good as you were." Gia commented.

"Lots of practice." The teen told her, with a rueful smile. "You should have seen Jet and his Freedom Fighters or better yet Ty Lee. You would have thought she was an airbender the way she could fly over a field like that. I'm just a clumsy Water Tribe guy compared to them."

With that the quartet left the field. Zoltan led the small group across the various camps to the nearest washing area. It was a simple affair with tables out front to wash clothes and dishes, and a section enclosed by tarps and blankets hung from ropes strung along a series of poles. In front was a heavy cart with two large barrels in it and a number of buckets hanging from pegs along the sides. A sign stated that a bucket of water was two coppers. Sokka noted that they also had small bars of soap and towels for rent as well. The dark eyed man patted his shoulder bag and told his younger companion,

"I have enough for us, we just need the water."

"I'll watch your stuff for you." Kizzy offered.

"Thanks," The young man said gratefully dumping his gear by a bench near the entrance.

Sokka paid for three buckets of water, and the two men, Zoltan with one bucket and the blue eyed teen carrying two, walked into the entrance of the curtained off area. A sign just in the opening pointed men to the left and women to the right. The two proceeded around the blanket that acted as a partition between the two sections.

The water tribesman felt, more than saw, someone behind him and tuning his head, was surprised to see the tall knife fighter following him into the men's section. Being distracted the young man missed an uneven section of the ground and stumbled. He was just able to save spilling the water from his buckets and landing on his face in the muddy ground.

"Let me take that." The tall woman said, taking the bucket from the dark skinned young man's left hand.

"Gia?" Zoltan asked turning at the sound of the woman's voice.

"What?" The fighter asked in return.

"This is the men's section." The dark eyed man explained.

"You boys won't mind." The slim woman said walking ahead. "And I thought you might need some help. Washing your backs and such."

"Aaaa…" The younger of the two men said.

"I don't think that will be a problem." The Traveler said.

"You sure?" The woman asked stopping and turning to the pair.

"Yeah." The dark skinned teen said reaching for the bucket she held. "Thanks though."

"Well ok." The woman told him as she handed over the pail of water. "But if you need anything I'll just be outside with Kizzy."

"That's good to know." The man with the golden earrings told the fighter.

The tall woman looked into the blue eyes, which were level with her own dark ones, as she walked past him and back out to the entrance. Sokka looked at Zoltan who smiled and shook his head in reply. The two men continued around the corner to the wash room, which was just a long narrow area enclosed in the cloth walls, with wooden planks for a floor and along one wall was a series of benches. Standing near one was an older man getting dressed. The two younger men nodded as they passed him and setting their supplies on a bench began to undress.

"What's with Gia?" The young man asked the Traveler quietly, as the two sat side by side on the bench pulling their boots off.

"Gia's interesting." The dark eyed man replied.

"What? Like the curse?" The younger man asked as he pulled off his socks.

"Yes, like the curse." The traveler replied. "I think she likes you."

"Likes me?" The blue eyed man said with a snort, as he stood up. "That must be why she's always challenging me to fights and threatening to kick my ass all the time. Besides she has a boyfriend."

"Oh Bela?" Zoltan asked taking down his pants. "He's not really Gia's boyfriend as such."

"As such?" The water tribesman said putting his pants on the bench and pulling off his loin cloth.

"Well he's more of a convenient friend." The older man replied, stripping off his own under garment. "Gia has a number of convenient friends."

The two men stood naked, each surreptitiously checking out the other and making mental comparisons. Neither felt particularly smug.

Sokka lifted one of the buckets and poured about a third of the contents over his head and body.

"Cold!" The blue eyed teen warned as he handed the bucket to his companion.

The young men shared the soap and began to wash themselves. The teen took special care to clean all of his scrapes and cuts.

"I really need to wash my clothes." The younger said reflectively as he rinsed himself off from a second bucket.

"Just give them to Tshilaba in the camp." The dark eyed man told him. "She's the laundress for the House Hold. I have a shirt and pants you can borrow. They may be a little short on you but they should work. Unless you want to ask Gia for an outfit. She's as tall as you are."

"Wouldn't be the first time." The young man said with a rueful smile. "The House Hold, what's its name? And I don't remember seeing a banner."

"Well we're a very young House Hold and don't really have a name yet." The older of the two replied, as he began to dry himself off. "And we've kicked around some ideas but we don't have a banner yet."

Zoltan stopped and looked at the dark skinned man. Sokka was staring at one of the blankets that made up the outside wall of the enclosure. The teen turned to him and using a hand signal asked the Traveler to keep talking.

"Our House Hold is made up of performers and fighters… "The dark eyed man explained, as he watched the young man. "… so we want a name and a banner that would include both aspects."

As Zoltan spoke Sokka quietly moved one of the benches to the blanket he had been studying. Then the young man took an empty bucket and scooped a couple of handfuls of water into it from the remaining full one. The water tribesman signaled the Traveler to keep talking.

"We've talked about different names like 'The War Drum', or the 'Dancing Drum' or something along those lines." The older of the two continued.

The teen carefully stepped up onto the bench. From this height the tall young man was able to look over the makeshift wall. He was looking almost straight down, and hoisted the bucket over his head.

"See anything interesting?" Sokka asked, then he dumped the meager contents of the wooden bucket on the head of the young woman peering through a hole she had cut in the blanket.

Gia looked up startled and saw the blue eyes of the tribesman dancing with merriment as he turned the bucket on to her. Expecting the contents of a full bucket the young woman ducked her head but was surprised by the small amount of water that just wet her head slightly. She heard Kizzy standing by the entrance laugh at her over reaction.

"You son of a bitch!" The tall woman cursed as she stood up.

The knife fighter then swung her fist in a round house punch at the young man behind the blanket. She wasn't aiming for his head.

Zoltan watched as the teen swung the bucket down between his groin and the blanket. There was a resounding,

"THOCK!"

As something hit the wooden pale with such force that the young man had to step off of the bench and the Traveler had to catch him to keep the blue eyed warrior on his feet.

"OW! FUCK! That hurt!" Gia cried out.

"Oh sorry that was so hard." Sokka shouted to the blanket. "I just got so excited seeing you all wet and bent over like that."

This last earned an,

"Ooooohhh!" From Zoltan and a,

"Next time I'll aim for something softer, like your HEAD!" From Gia.

The two young men laughed, then the older marked an imaginary score of one in the air and the two bumped fists.

* * *

"Jewelry first." Mirela said leading the two younger girls into the stalls by the side of the road.

Toph had never cared much for jewelry. She had her armlet and that's all she ever wore or wanted to wear. Necklaces, bracelets and rings just got in her way, but the dancer and the drummer seemed to love it all, wearing chains of coins on their heads and around their necks, with bells and bangles on their wrists and ankles, each wore a number of rings, even on their thumbs and each had a number of earrings.

The dancer did most of the shopping for the small earthbender. The drummer just seemed to drool over everything and kept offering items that would inevitably be rejected by the oldest of the trio.

"Ooooh… These are pretty!" The teenager exclaimed holding up two silver rings.

"Laura those are nipple rings." Mirela told her disdainfully.

"So, they still would be pretty." The drummer advised, holding the rings up to her breasts. "And I hear that boys really like them."

"If boys like them so much they can wear them." The dancer shot back. "And who would she show them to? No, she's too young, and so are you for that matter."

"Aahhh…" The younger sister complained with a pout, while returning the rings to the case she had found them in.

"How would you keep them on?" The blind girl asked, not even thinking about why you would wear something like that on your bumps.

"They go through the hole." The drummer explained.

"I don't understand." The youngest replied.

"They poke a hole through your nipple and the ring opens and you push it through and then close it." The teenage Traveler explained.

"Ow!" The blind girl said folding her arms across her chest.

"They say it only hurts a little." The dark eyed teen told her.

The three girls spent forever shopping, at least to the blind girl. Toph was bedecked in four necklaces, each one of a different length for a "layered" look. The metal was cold against her bare skin, especially the longest one that nestled between her small breasts. She had bells and bangles but she had refused the earrings.

"Anyone that comes near me with something sharp gets buried." She had told them.

Laura had tried to talk her into getting some toe rings but the small bender did not want anything on her feet. The ankle jewelry was already interfering slightly with her "sight".

Toph was already sick of this. All she wanted was to get to the foot kissing, and only if Meathead was standing there watching.

"Well some of us have to work." Mirela said as they exited the last shop. "We can go clothes shopping after our performance."

"Can't you have Emilian play for you." The drummer whined. "Then Misty Green and I can finish shopping and be ready for tonight."

"Well I don't know…" The dancer said.

"That way you won't have to go from the stage to the shops and you can rest up for your next performance." The younger sister argued.

"That's true." The elder sibling replied. "All right! But there are going to be rules. One; don't spend all the money. There is plenty here and I want most of it left when you get back to camp."

With that Mirela pulled a purse of coins hanging from her neck out from her over dress and handed it to Laura. The money in the purse was Toph's. The eldest of the three had taken it from her money belt and put it into a neck purse since the young girl would be trying on clothes and the woman didn't want the young girl leaving a belt full of gold lying around in some shop.

"Two; I want to see everything you buy." The dancer said in her big sister voice. "And get receipts, since you will have to take half of it back."

"Yes, Mirela." The drummer answered hanging the purse around her own neck, and tucking it under her surcoat.

"Three;" The black haired woman went on. "Remember she is younger than you and you are too young to wear most of the clothes you like so she can't wear anything you like."

"Yes, I'll remember." The teen affirmed.

"Alright, Misty Green…" The dancer turned to the blind girl. "…it's up to you keep Laura out of trouble."

"Got it." The youngest of the three said.

The shapely dancer shook her head in rueful anticipation of the result of this decision but then she waved and walked down the road towards the stage.

Laura waved as she watched her sister walk away. Once the woman was lost in the crowd the drummer turned to the bender and taking her hand said,

"Now we can do some fun shopping."

With that the teen led the twelve year old back to the shop that sold piercings.

* * *

"What about this?" Sokka asked Zoltan.

The four of them were walking back to the campsite, Zoltan on the water tribesman's right, Gia on his left and Kizzy on the dark eyed man's right. The two young men were fully dressed now, and Sokka was wearing his throwing knives and leg brace, with his sword belt worn low on his hips. They had been discussing names for the House Hold and ideas for what the banner should be. The blue eyed warrior had done a rough sketch of an idea he had had and had just handed it to the leader.

"Well I like the idea of the drum and the crossed knives." The dark eyed man replied, though he sounded a little unsure if that was actually what he was seeing. "But what's this on top?"

"Oh that's a storm cloud with a lightning bolt coming out of it." The fifteen year old explained.

The leader handed the book to Kizzy and when she returned it to him he handed it over to Gia.

"That's a storm cloud?" The tall woman asked, handing it back to the dark skinned warrior.

"Yeah." He said a little doubt creeping into his voice as he examined his sketch.

"What's it supposed to mean?" The archer asked. "The storm cloud and the lightning?"

"It was just an idea I had." The teen explained.

"Well I like the drum and the crossed knives part." Zoltan said, patting the younger man on the shoulder. "But I think you should forget the cloud and lightning."

"Yeah I guess it doesn't work." The young man said, examining the sketch.

"I'm with Z on the drum and knives though." Gia said.

The tall woman was walking along beside the young man with her hand on his shoulder, while looking at the sketch. Occasionally her hip would bump his, and her chest would rub against his arm, as they walked.

"Well I was thinking of a light green background… " The teen began, pointing to parts of the drawing. "… with a yellow border, gold drum with a white head, black…"

The blue eyed warrior was interrupted in his description when he felt the knife fighter's hand tense up on his shoulder.

"Well those were just some ideas." The young man said defensively to the tall woman on his left. "You can pick your own colors."

"What Gia?" Zoltan asked, seeing the fighter looking ahead of the quartet.

"Nothing." The slim woman told her leader. "It's just that asshole Boldo and his friends from Aishe's House Hold."

Sokka, along with the rest of the small group looked ahead and saw a group of six young men standing by an entrance to a large roped off camping area. Hanging from a pole sunk into the ground near the opening was a banner of a lion standing on its hind legs and pawing the air with its two front ones. The image on the banner rang a bell in the water tribesman's mind.

"Just ignore them Gia." Zoltan told the fighter. "We're just passing by, and don't want any trouble."

The young man surmised that there was history and not the good kind between the leader of the young men and Gia. Maybe there was bad blood not just between Gia and the "Lions" but between the two House Holds.

"The grips on the knives would be black." The warrior went on with his description. "And the blades would be silver."

All three Travelers leaned in to look at the sketch as they neared the entrance to the large campsite.

"Well looky here." A young man's loud voice cut the fifteen year old off. "It looks like 'Zero' and his 'girrrls' have added another outcast to their little House Hold."

Sokka shot a quick glance at the group. Six young men, fairly fit in appearance, all had the clasp knives of the Travelers sticking prominently out of their sashes. The speaker, Boldo the water tribe warrior assumed, was leaning on a halberd, the polished ax head glinting on the end of its pole in the low early morning sun. Three others of the group wore long thin curved swords in addition to their knives.

The blue eyed teen felt Gia's hand grip painfully into his shoulder, and the woman leaned even more into the tribesman as they got nearer the larger group.

"Oh look boys." Boldo said pointing to the water tribesman. "This must be the Dark Skin that all the girls were talking about."

"I'm not sure about yellow for the border." Zoltan said to the young man, pointing to the sketch in the book. "What about something like a dark green or black?"

The quartet had just passed the larger group when Boldo called out,

"Hey Dark Skin, how's it feel to get your ass kicked by a little girl."

This last statement received a loud appreciative laugh from the young men around him.

"Wonderful!" The teen called back over his shoulder in a light tone. "You should try it sometime. I highly recommend it."

This earned him a bark of laughter from Zoltan, a quiet giggle from Kizzy, and a smile and shoulder squeeze from Gia, as the four continued on their way down the path.

"Hey Zero!" The halberdier called out stepping onto the path behind the smaller party. "Dykes and Psychos are one thing but are you really so desperate that your letting Wets into your tiny little House Hold of misfits and rejects now?"

The four fighters slowed and stopped in their journey. Sokka sighed sadly, as he tied his note book onto his belt. In answer to the young man's sigh the leader of the House Hold said in a tone of resignation,

"Yeah…"

The four turned back towards the halberdier.

"If by that you mean I am from the Water Tribe, then you are right, I am." The dark skinned young man said, dropping his left hand onto the scabbard mouth of his sword. "I just don't care much for that word."

"And if by that you mean that I prefer something hot and wet over a little shriveled up useless piece of meat. Then I guess you're right." Kizzy said, drawing an arrow from her quiver and deftly nocking it into her bow. "I just don't like that name."

"I just don't like you." Zoltan said, reaching into his sash and drawing out his knives.

"Well at least you got one right." Gia called to Boldo, with a feral glint in her dark eyes, as she reached under her surcoat and pulled out two knives. "I am a psycho, but you forgot the bitch part."

Sokka saw that people were coming out from the surrounding campsites to see what was happening on the path. He thought he recognized two of the teenage girls that came to the entrance of the "Lions" camp. One girl locked eyes with him for a moment, she had been the one that had looked so cute as she showed him what her House Hold banner looked like, and she then ran back into the campsite. Everyone else on both sides of the path just stood and waited for something to happen.

The water tribe warrior could see that the five young men with Boldo had their hands on their weapons but had not joined the halberdier in the path yet. The dark skinned young man, using the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, pushed his sword slightly out of its sheath.

* * *

"It still hurts." Toph told the drummer, as she held her borrowed surcoat away from her belly button.

"Tell me about it!" The teen age girl replied holding her blouse away from her breasts.

The two girls were walking down the line of shops. The bender could not believe she had let Laura talk her into paying some stranger to stab her in the stomach and then to have him hang a bunch of cold metal from the wound.

"You'll see the boys will love it." The older of the two said in a tight voice. "Wait up! This is that under wrap shop I told you about."

"Why call them that, they don't wrap anything?" The blind girl asked as she followed her new friend into the shop.

* * *

"Tell me Zoltan…" Sokka asked the dark eyed man next to him. "…among the Travelers if you kill someone does that start a blood feud or can you just pay a fine?"

"We pay a fine." The Traveler told the younger man with a smile. "The amount depends on who you kill."

"Can it be coins or do you have to give trade goods to satisfy the debt?" The dark skinned man asked conversationally.

"Usually its coins, but you can use anything of value." The man with the gold earrings explained.

"If you are going to kill him…" Kizzy asked. "… can I shoot him first?"

"Wait a second!" Gia jumped in before the teen could answer. "I want a piece of him too."

"If I'm paying then he's mine and I'm not sharing." The water tribesman affirmed.

"But the piece I want is very small." The tall woman argued, holding up her little finger and wiggling it. "I know for a fact that it is completely useless and of no value."

This last received a number of giggles from the women in the crowd, and even some heads nodding in affirmation.

"And I just want to shoot him a little." The archer pleaded.

Which earned a scattering of laughter.

"No, sorry." The young man told the two women. "My money, I get to kill him first, then you two can fight over what's left."

Boldo was looking nervously to his companions who were still standing by the entrance to the large campsite. They seemed to have no inclination to leave the roped off area and join him in the street. The halberdier aimed his weapon towards the blue eyed warrior.

The crowds of onlookers from all the surrounding camps had grown. The entrance to the great camp was now crowded with people of all ages.

"Is he any good?" Sokka asked quietly.

"Pretty good at practices." Zoltan replied in the same quiet tone. "His only real fighting is with his little group, beating up drunks."

"If I'm short a coin or two…" The dark man asked in his full voice. "… could you loan me the difference?"

"Don't worry." The dark eyed man told him, closing his knives and returning them to his sash. "Each man killed is judged by his worth, you'll have no problem paying the recompense for Boldo."

"That's good to know." The teen said turning towards the halberdier.

"I am of the House of the Lion." Boldo pronounced with bravado. "You don't want to start something with us."

Sokka smiled, raised his right hand to rest it on his own left shoulder, his left hand still on the mouth of the scabbard of his sword, eyeing the man up the street from him. He examined the man's form and stance, watched his face and eyes. Boldo was holding the pole ax straight out towards the water tribesman, threatening him with the long metal spike on top of the ax head, as if the weapon were a spear.

Sokka had fought halberds before. They were used by Fire Army Troops. A dangerous weapon that consisted of a square cross section pole a little taller than the water tribesman was, with an ax head on top. They could be used for chopping, thrusting, or hooking with the various spikes and blades integrated into the ax. Most men used it just as Boldo was, as a thrusting weapon. The halberdier had his right hand back towards the butt of the pole, his left forward. He was standing sideways with his left foot forward his face turned towards the tribesman.

_He's a stop and poke fighter._ The young man thought. _Nervous, never been in a real fight before, not where his life was at risk. He will inhale then rock back before he thrusts, and he will probably thrust early before I am in range, and he will have a hard time swinging the weapon towards his right, my left._

The warrior with the cold blue eyes began to walk slowly towards the man with the pole ax. The watchers grew silent, some holding their breath. The dark man let his hand slip from his shoulder down to his elbow as he moved toward the spike of the halberd aimed at his chest.

_Not too slow, but not too fast, let him get nervous._ The teen told himself as he walked forward.

_Wait!_

_Now slow down just a little._

Boldo blinked, then took a breath as he rocked back on his legs.

_Wait!_

The halberdier rocked forward thrusting straight ahead at the teen.

Sokka advanced to his left, pushing off with his right leg, bypassing the head of the pole ax. His right hand slid down his left arm directly onto the grip of his sword and without pause continued the movement drawing the blade into an upward slicing motion.

_Slice don't chop!_

There was the ring of steel striking wood as the ax head was cut from the pole and went spinning into the air. The swordsman advanced again along the line of the pole, both hands on his weapon as it sang down through the pole a second time, before his opponent could even react.

_Cross step, advance!_

Sokka closed on the pole man, his sword point thrusting towards the terrified young man's face. Boldo stepped back trying to bat the blade away with the remnant of his halberd.

_Disengage, cut!_

The swordsman dropped the point slightly letting the pole pass by, then he brought it up in a circle slicing down and to his left. The pole became a small stick as another section flew off. The tribesman continued the movement bringing the blade up over his left shoulder, as he continued his advance on his opponent. Sokka thrust the pommel forward, striking the ex-halberdier sharply in the forehead. The man's legs collapsed and he dropped like a bundle of rocks.

_Sloppy!_ Sokka chided himself. _Very sloppy!_ Sifu Piandao would not be happy with him.

As his vision cleared Boldo looked up to see the Dark Skin standing over him, like a giant against the blue sky, the long shining steel blade ending somewhere under the Traveler's chin. The terrified young man raised his eyes to look into the face of the swordsman. His eyes found the cold blue ones of the water tribesman. The defeated man saw no hesitation, no compassion, no emotion what so ever in those terrible blue eyes, only death.

"I yield! I yield!" The Traveler croaked, raising his hands in surrender.

"We… " Dark Skin told him, gesturing with his left hand towards his companions down the street. "Are Rolling Thunder, and even the Lion, if he has any sense, will seek his den when he hears us approach, for Thunder is always preceded by lightning."

Sokka pulled his sword up and sheathed it as he walked down to rejoin his party, leaving Boldo to lie in the dust.

"Her den." A woman's voice said.

* * *

"She'll take these four." Laura told the clerk, pulling coins from the purse. "And I'll have these six."

"Why do I need four?" Toph asked.

"They're different colors." The drummer explained. "Red, black, green, and white."

"I don't care about colors." The blind girl said in a tired voice.

"But boys do." The teen explained excitedly. "Especially when they show through your clothes."

"Of course." The young girl sighed. She then turned to the clerk and asked, "Is there a shop where I can buy some real underwear?"

"I think there is one in the village just across the bridge." The shop girl replied.

"Thanks." The bender replied.

* * *

"Aishe." Zoltan said, acknowledging with a bow the older woman who had just spoken.

Sokka turned towards the woman's voice and following the example of his friends bowed respectfully to the older woman. She was standing in the entrance way of the great camp, with the teenage girl from the training ground standing beside her. Although the speaker's face was creased with age and her black hair shot through with grey strands, the water tribesman could see that this woman of medium height and build, held great power, and her manner showed she had earned and expected respect and obedience. The teen made sure to bow lower than the dark eyed man beside him.

"Zoltan." The woman returned the bow. "So good to see you again. It has been too long since you visited me here. And you have brought Gia and Kizzy as well, this is quite the reunion."

"It is always a pleasure to meet you, Lioness of the Tribes." The dark eyed man replied. "You are always welcome in our humble camp, if you yearn for our company."

"Just as you are always welcome back into mine." Aishe said, then nodding towards Sokka asked, "Is this the Dark… Skin that I have heard so much about this morning, the one that fights benders for fun?"

"The one and the same." Zoltan said, clapping Sokka on the shoulder. "Although he is a stranger, we have accepted him as one of our own."

"Ah yes your House Hold." The woman said thoughtfully. "It would seem you have finally chosen a name. Rolling Thunder, it suits you and yours."

"I am glad you like it, Lioness of the Tribes." The dark eyed man replied.

"Odd you have never craved my approval before." The woman observed.

"Nor do we now, but your taste and skill in making names for others has such renown that it would be the height of arrogance for me not to be happy at your approval." Zoltan explained.

The fifteen year old could hear in their voices that the two had a history with each other. He couldn't determine the exact story but he knew it wasn't good.

"It is an honor to be held in such esteem." Aishe acknowledged with a nod. "But tell me Zoltan why did you and yours, accost the guard to my camp."

"Forgive us Lioness." The dark eyed man said bowing. "We had no idea he was in your service. He appeared no more than a loud fool standing in the High Road of the Tribe, who by word and tone had insulted my House and my friends. Dark Skin was only trying to teach him the proper form of address for strangers and Travelers alike."

"Boldo!" The woman called out.

The young man, who had struggled to his feet, and was standing, rubbing his forehead, dropped his hands and stood at attention before the formidable older woman.

As Sokka looked at the halberdier he suddenly felt light headed, and his breath caught in his chest. Something in the man's appearance caused a cold chill to run down the water tribesman's spine. The only unusual thing about the man was the red mark left by the swordsman's pommel on his forehead. Sokka rubbed the back of his neck in thought.

"Why…" Aishe asked the defeated man. "…have you abandoned the post of honor I have given to you? Your duty was to stand here and guard the entrance to my camp, not to stand in the road and embarrass my House by insulting every 'odd' passerby. You are no longer in my service. I will only allow you to remain in my camp if you apologize to these Travelers."

Boldo bowed to each of the four fighters in front of him.

"Forgive me for any insult my words may have caused. It was not my intent to appear rude." The loud young man told them.

Boldo walked back to the entry rubbing his forehead, then after bowing to the matriarch of the House Hold, walked into the camp.

"Dark Skin." Aishe called, gesturing with her hand for Sokka to approach her.

The tribesman shot a glance to Zoltan who indicated he should go. The swordsman walked up to the older woman and bowed respectfully to her.

"Tell me." The woman asked rising from her answering bow. "Why didn't you kill Boldo."

"Well…" Sokka stood embarrassed for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck. "To be honest I got lazy."

This answer caused murmurs among the crowd of watchers, a bark of laughter from Zoltan and a raised eyebrow from Aishe.

"Lazy?" The woman asked.

"Not the killing part. That would have been easy." The teen explained. "It's everything that comes afterward that is a lot of work, and I just felt Boldo wasn't worth the effort."

This got a laugh from most everyone listening and even got a chuckle from the matriarch.

"You are strange and skilled." The woman told him. "I would like to talk with you. As you may have heard we are opening our camp this evening, since it is our last night on this ground. There will be wine, food, dancing, and music. I hope you will come and see me."

"Thank you, Lioness. I have already been invited." The water tribesman replied, bowing to the pretty teenage girl standing beside the matriarch. But I will have to give you the same answer I gave the previous invitation. I cannot promise to attend, for I have many tasks to perform, since this is also my last day and night on this ground. But I will attend if I can."

"Well if Mala's youthful charms cannot entice you." Aishe said, looking at the girl. "Then you will not be inspired to attend by my old ones."

"Oh Lady." Sokka said bowing again. "Although Mala's charms have the beauty and suppleness of youth."

The young girl turned her head down to hide the blush that suddenly rushed to her cheeks.

"The charms you hide with those sparkling dark eyes." The swordsman went on looking directly into the face of the older woman. "Are far more enticing."

Aishe raised a skeptical eyebrow at the dark skinned teen, who answered with an eyebrow of his own, and raised the bet with a small grin.

"Clever." The matriarch pronounced, as a large grin broke out on her face. "I like you. Guards this Dark Skin is to be considered a guest of the camp. He may come and go as he pleases armed and unmolested."

"Thank you." Sokka said bowing. "You do me great honor."

"And when you have sampled Mala's charms be sure to pay me a visit." Aishe told him. "If only for contrast, if nothing more."

"Thus you do me the greatest honor." The swordsman said bowing again.

"Clever…" The older woman said, then she turned and re-entered her camp.

Mala bowed and waved to the teen before turning and following her mistress into the camp.

* * *

"Princess!" Corporal Gok called, bowing as Toph and Laura exited the shop. "Forgive me for not finding you earlier but you look so different that I wasn't sure it was you until just now."

"Yeah, I know." Toph said returning the bow. "I look old."

"Never!" The soldier said. "You look even more beautiful then when I first met you."

"Princess?" The drummer asked, bouncing up and down fit to burst.

"I'm not a princess." The bender told her friend. "This is sergeant… somebody."

"Corporal Gok, miss." The cavalry man introduced himself to the Traveler.

"Laura, Corporal Gok; Corporal Gok, Laura." Toph said.

"We heard about that little trouble you had yesterday." The corporal told the bender. "We arrested the two gamblers that you so effectively restrained, but the others got away. It would give me the greatest pleasure if you would allow me and my squad to escort you through the fair."

_Great!_ The blind girl thought. _To have a bunch of soldiers standing around watching while I'm buying underwear._

"Ooooo, a military escort!" Laura squealed, clapping her hands.

"Oh sure." Toph told him. _This day just gets better and better._

"I'll be happy to carry any packages you have." The corporal offered.

The two girls held out the tiny paper wrapped parcels to the soldier, who accepted them with a bow.

* * *

"You were wonderful!" Gia said throwing her arm around Sokka's shoulder as the four friends walked down the road back to their camp ground.

"It was nicely done." Zoltan agreed.

"Nicely done?" Kizzy asked. "I've never seen sword work like that, and so fast on your feet."

"Oh that!" The tall woman said. "Yes the fighting was great, but I was talking about him going toe to toe with that dried up old cow!"

Gia pulled the young man into her side so hard that she nearly lifted him off his feet. The other two Travelers laughed, both at the knife fighter's statement and at the water tribesman's discomfiture.

"I get the feeling that the three of you were once Lions." Sokka observed.

"For years." The archer told him." Until Aishe discovered that I was 'Un-natural'."

Kizzy said the word in a light tone, but the water tribesman could hear the hurt and bitterness underlying the tone.

"And that I was a crazy bitch that thought with my crotch." The tall woman explained.

"So she banished you?" Sokka asked.

"Not Z." Gia said. "Z was her favorite and ran the House Hold for her."

"No, not Z…" Kizzy said reaching up and squeezing the dark eyed man's shoulder affectionately.

"I really didn't have a choice." The man said sliding his arm around the archer's waist and pulling her close to him as the four walked along.

"He was wonderful!" The tall woman said, and then dropping her voice into a fair imitation of her leader's said, "These women have served this House loyally for years. They have never brought dishonor on you or their fellows. To cast them out is a crime. Loyalty given is loyalty earned. By banishing them you have shown that you have no honor. I have no choice but to walk with them out of your camp and out of your service."

"As I said I had no choice." Zoltan said, raising his free hand and linking arms with Gia across the young man's shoulders. Sokka in response slung his arms around the waists of the two Travelers and the four were now linked together.

"So we started our own House Hold." Gia told the swordsman. "Just the three of us. That was fun! We would go to the training ground and take on all comers. We would fight all day and go back to Z's caravan and fuck all night, the three of us in that big bed of his. Then we'd get up and do it all over again. I miss that bed sometimes."

"As far as I remember…" The archer said thoughtfully. "You never needed a bed before."

"I didn't say I needed it." The knife woman explained. "I just said I missed it, and you two in it with me."

"That's because you were the center of attention." The dark eyed man told her unlinking his arms so he could point to the tall woman. "Since Kiz doesn't like guys we were both fucking you."

"And I was the best fuck you ever had." Gia said with pride, pulling her arm off of the water tribe warrior to preen her hair.

Sokka dropped his arms as well as the three Travelers began to mock argue.

"Well I don't know about the best." The ear ringed man thought. "The most enthusiastic maybe."

"Energetic." Kizzy offered.

"Adventurous." Zoltan returned.

"Flexible." The archer said nodding.

"Insatiable." The dark eyed man said.

"That's the one." Kizzy agreed.

The two speakers bumped fists.

"He's got a girlfriend." The knife fighter confidentially told the dark skinned teen. "So he has to lie. I'm the best fuck in the world."

"You've had the most practice." Kizzy said laughing.

"Practice makes perfect!" Gia announced.

All three laughed at that, even Sokka joined in after a second. Truth be told, he had been a little embarrassed by the conversation.

"Anyway." Kizzy added. "Fighters that were unhappy with their Houses began to join us on the field, and later they joined our camp."

"Yeah… then Zoltan fell in love." Gia said disdainfully, holding her hands open in front of her chest.

"Hey!" The dark eyed man warned.

"Gia's just jealous, we're all jealous. M'ela's beautiful." The archer tried to mollify her leader.

"I'm not jealous." The slim woman defended, swinging her hands up and down. "If I had those things hanging off me I couldn't fight to save my life."

"When M'ela joined our house she brought musicians and dancers with her." Kizzy explained.

"So we became the fighting dancing House Hold." Gia explained, dropping her hands to her sides.

"No! We became Rolling Thunder!" Zoltan said in a deep voice, punching Sokka on the shoulder.

"Yeah where did that come from?" The tall woman asked.

"I had to say something, and it just came to me." The swordsman explained.

"That's what that storm cloud was about!" Kizzy said in understanding pointing to the dark teen.

"'For lightning always precedes the thunder'. That's good, I like that." Gia told the teen, bumping him with her hip.

"So do I." The leader of the Travelers said. "Maybe that could go on the banner. Rolling Thunder across the top and the lightning line on the bottom under the drum."

"Make way!" Kizzy called out raising her arm as the quartet walked along. "Make way for…"

The three others joined her as she cried out,

"Rolling Thunder!"

* * *

Toph pulled her pants up again. She was walking along with Laura, preceded by Corporal Gok and followed by his squad of troopers carry the parcels of the two girls. The blind girl was wearing one of her two new outfits and the way the drummer had told her to wear the pants was causing a problem.

"You want them to be loose enough that they slide around on your hips." The teen had explained.

"But then they feel like they're falling off." The bender had complained.

"That's the point. Boys like it when you look like your clothes are coming off." The drummer had told her.

_Forget this!_ The young girl finally told herself, and reaching under her new surcoat retied the draw string on her pants so that they stayed up.

That had been another thing. The draw string thing.

"Can you change the draw string on these to a really long bright yellow one." The teen had asked the shop girl helping them.

"Why?" Toph had asked.

"You want the drawstring to stand out so boys can see it." Laura had instructed. "Then when you are talking to them you can play with the ends and make the bow knot smaller and smaller. Boys really like that and can't take their eyes off of it while you're doing it."

This whole getting boys to like her thing was turning into a nightmare. The blind girl was interrupted in her musings by the drummer's voice saying,

"Oooo… Tattoos!"

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

This chapter kept getting longer and longer so I decided to break it up here, even though I was supposed to have them back on the road again by now. Plus it took me forever to get even this up. But hey it's me, you're probably used to it by now, I just hope you are still reading.

A little more of the history of Zoltan and his House Hold and his history with Gia and Kizzy. Sokka got to show off and Toph went to the mall.

Next chapter will be party time.

I just noticed that this story is almost one year old. I posted the first chapter on April 19, 2010. This is very strange. I thought it would be long over by now.

I always try to answer every review with a personal reply if I missed anyone please forgive me.

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To Mental Traveler 1st review; thank you very much. I am glad the fight worked. It was difficult to come up with a scenario where it looked like Sokka had a chance so I really appreciate your kind words.

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To Guest 1; Thank you very much for your kind words and thoughtful review. My response will be long and I hope you will stick with me to the end.

When I started this story a year ago I told myself that I wasn't allowed to cheat. No skipping four or five years so that they would be a more comfortable age. No just fading out or killing off of Suki (though she has pretty much disappeared from this story). I would address cannon and would not ignore it. That means that Toph is twelve and Sokka is fifteen with all that those ages entail.

Toph is entering into puberty, and from the isolated nature of her upbringing that means she is having to discover what becoming a girl and what sex is, all on her own.

Sokka is a fifteen year old boy with all that that entails. With all the sexual drives and desires of a boy moving through puberty into adulthood.

They both have to come to terms with their feelings, both emotional and sexual towards each other and therein lies my story. It will be about the choices that both of the characters make and the journey, physical, mental, emotional, and metaphorical, that they are on. By the end of the story Toph will be a teenage girl and Sokka will be a young man. At least that is my plan.

As to the graphic nature of the sexual encounters in the story. In a much earlier Author's note I said the story would not contain any lemons. I am just not comfortable with writing them. Now of course the lemon is in the eye of the beholder (there has to be joke there but I can't think of it right now). What is storytelling to me and necessary for the development of the character, may be a lemon to you. I have no control over that, and if you are uncomfortable with the story so far you will probably find the next chapter, even though it will not involve Toph, too much for you. If you do I am sorry but I think it will be important for the characters and the story.

For a last remark I would like to address the Chi Unblocking scene. That seems to have been a problem for a couple of readers. As I said in my note for that chapter it was just that. Sokka was using acupressure to unblock Toph's chi. His hand never left her stomach. I should have made that clearer in the story. Now that being said, was there a sexual component to it, of course there was. The boy she loves is rubbing her stomach and she is feeling energy move through her body. Toph has to be turned on by it, and that becomes confused with the actual chi energy that is being released. Do either of the character realize that, no. Sokka was just trying to help his friend and Toph didn't realize what was happening to her. This will also be addressed in the next chapter.

I hope you find this reply satisfactory and that you will keep reading and reviewing. Don't let me cheat.

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To Mental Traveler 2nd Review; Thank you very much. You did not step on any toes of mine and I was honored that you expressed such confidence in me as a writer. As a side note, from what I have read of the arctic peoples of Greenland, it was common for girls as young as eleven and twelve to be married to men in their thirties and forties. Katara was going to bring that up as an old custom of the Southern Water Tribe in a later chapter. It was all part of survival in such a hostile environment.

Anyway, thank you again for your confidence and reviews. I really appreciate them.

x

To Kagey; Well I told you on DA but I just wanted to tell you here I love your drawings.

To Guest 2; Thank you very much, though you should be careful what you say I am taking as long as I want :-)

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To Shdowolf; Wow! Thank you so much for all your reviews and the review on chapter 16 has me out looking for bigger hats to fit my swelled head. I have to say that is my favorite chapter.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	38. Chapter 38

I'll Walk You Home pt 38

Chapter 12

pt. 3

Heat

* * *

Sokka walked into the House Hold camp of Rolling Thunder with the three Travelers. The quartet broke up and each went to different caravans, the water tribesman to the cart of the dancer and the drummer searching for his friend. When he found the caravan deserted he began to ask around the camp after any of the three girls. That's when he found out that they had gone into the fair to shop.

_Crap! Crap! Crap! _The young man thought. Toph was out there without any protection and those gamblers were probably still after her. He ran to Zoltan's caravan and pounded on the door.

"What's wrong?" The Traveler asked opening the door and coming down the steps.

"Toph…ehh Misty Green is out with Mirela and Laura shopping." The teen answered. "I have to find them before the gamblers do!"

"Is that all?" The leader said waving for the tribesman to calm down. "Misty can take care of herself. She kicked your butt after all."

"You don't understand." The boy answered torn between explaining and just running off into the fair after his friend. "She can't see… well feel archers. Well not if they are up in trees or on wooden carts. I have to find her before they do."

"Wait!" The dark eyed man ordered, then he called out, "Kizzy!"

The woman waved and jogged over to the two men.

"Dark skin has an archer problem." The ear ringed man explained.

"My favorite kind." The woman said with a smile raising her bow.

"Thanks!" Sokka told Zoltan, grabbing his forearm.

The Traveler was surprised by the gesture, but then grabbed hold of the young man's arm in return, it seemed like the thing to do.

"Thanks Kizzy!" Deep Blue said to the archer. "Let's go!"

Dark Skin, followed by the archer, ran out of the camp, onto the road, and into the fair.

* * *

"Finished." The man said.

Laura breathed a sigh of relief and released her hold on Toph's hand. The young bender breathed a sigh of relief as well. She wrung out her hand, trying to restore feeling to it. The drummer had been squeezing it for at least a half an hour, and Toph wasn't sure that all the bones were still intact.

"How's it look?" The teenage girl asked.

"Yeah…" The younger girl said waving her tingling hand in front of her face. "Not the best judge."

"Huhh?" The drummer asked.

"Here see for yourself." The man told her holding a small mirror near her left butt cheek.

Laura craned her head over her shoulder where she lay on the bench, and looked in the mirror.

"Ohhh! Pretty!" The teenage girl squeed. "I love the colors."

The drummer was looking at a small tattoo, she could cover it with her thumb, of a drum on her left buttock. The base was dark green with a red skin on top and the whole surrounded by a rich black border.

The tattoo artist took a brush from a pot and painted a sticky amber liquid around the image then covered it with a small piece of gauze.

"Leave that on till tonight in case of any bleeding." He advised the teenager. "The swelling and redness will go down in a couple-three days."

Laura pulled her pants up and climbed down off of the high bench, arranging her clothes.

"Now what about you White Skin?" The artist asked, taking the blind girl's hand.

"No thanks." Toph answered. "I'm fine as is."

"Oh, that's a shame." The man said turning the bender's hand over and gently stroking the inside of her forearm. "You have such beautiful, fine, white skin I would almost be willing to do one for nothing just to work on such a wonderful canvas."

"Sorry." Toph told him pulling her arm free and standing up from the chair she had been sitting in. "I'm not a big supporter of the visual arts."

"Well if you change your mind you know where to find me." The artist said as he stood up and bowed to the young girl.

The two girls left the tent and met Corporal Gok who had been waiting at the entrance for them.

"Sorry Goky." Laura told him, swinging her hips as she walked by the trooper. "You don't get to carry what I bought this time."

"Awww…" The soldier replied with a smile. "For once I was really looking forward to holding your purchase."

That earned him an appreciative giggle from the pretty teen, which the soldier was thankful for. He had been working on what he was going to say ever since the two girls had entered the shop.

"Where to now?" The drummer asked the bender.

"I still need to get some real underwear." The younger girl said. "And a change of travel clothes wouldn't hurt."

"Well that would be across the bridge in the other side of the village." The older of the two said, rubbing the bandage under her pants. "Maybe we could get some lunch afterward."

"Sounds good to me." The blind girl said. "To the village Gok."

"Certainly Princess." The trooper replied leading the way.

* * *

Sokka ran up onto the road.

_Stop! Look! Think!_ The boy told himself. He did a quick search of the area and didn't see his friend anywhere. _Remember she is dressed as a Traveler!_ Luckily there were not that many Traveler girls walking through the fair. Most of the people on the road and in the shops were locals and looked very different from the young women working in the stalls, caravans and shops.

Dark Skin looked to the stage area searching the audience. _No Travelers there_. He looked to the stage itself. There was a group of three women dancing. His eyes scanned the dancers and then moved on to the musicians. _No Toph!_ Off to the side he saw other Travelers. _Mirela!_ He saw the dancer and Emilian relaxing on a bench, obviously between performances. _But No Toph or Laura._ They must be in the fair.

"Take the left, I'll take the right." He told Kizzy.

"Right!" The archer answered, moving along the road.

The two moved through the shops and stalls but with no luck until just before the gambling games section, Sokka saw someone that although not the girl he was looking for was a possible solution to his problem. He signaled Kizzy to join him by the side of the road.

All morning as they searched, the crowds of shoppers had been growing. It was the last day of the fair, and the road was nearly jammed with people. The tall tribesman was able to use his height advantage to look over the crowd and spotted the woman archer from the day before standing by a gambling tent on the right side of the road. He pointed her out to Kizzy.

"That's Chin." The Traveler told him. "She's very good, and always works with her son Hu. She's very expensive to hire."

"Found the boy." The swordsman said. "About sixty strides up on the left, by the cart."

"I've got him." Kizzy replied. "Well if they're here then they can't be hunting Misty Green."

"True." Sokka said thoughtfully. "Keep an eye on the boy, I'm going to go talk to Mom."

"Be careful." His new friend warned him, as she quietly nocked an arrow into her bow.

* * *

The two girls and the ten soldiers were moving through the food market of the town nearing the bridge across the river to the clothing stores and restaurants. Toph remembered just yesterday going through the produce and food shops with her friend. It had been a fun time, Sokka always made everything fun. They reached the bridge and the young bender unconsciously reached out for the young man's hand but he wasn't there. She missed Stupid.

* * *

Sokka moved toward the mercenary. When he was about twenty paces away he stopped in the road and waited for her to notice him. Eventually the woman turned in his direction and he caught her eye. She pulled her bow off of her shoulder and her eyes flashed first to her son and then she began checking in the crowd, but she kept coming back to the blue eyed warrior standing in the road.

The swordsman just stood quietly and waved to the archer. He saw her reach for an arrow in the quiver hanging from her belt. He frowned at her, he then raised both his hands palms open towards her. She paused, her hand still on the arrow but the arrow was still in the quiver.

Sokka turned his hands in toward each other and using his fingers as a head and face and using his thumbs as mouths used them as puppets to mime a conversation. He would look to which ever hand was "talking" and with an exaggerated expression show either interest, surprise, and finally amusement. Finally he turned his face to the woman, turning both hands towards her as well. The three faces expectantly waited for her reaction.

The mercenary had to smile and shake her head at the performance. She released the arrow, letting it slide back down into her quiver, and then waved the silly young man over to join her. All three faces smiled as the blue eyed teen moved through the crowd.

"I'm Sokka." The young man introduced himself bowing. "But they call me Dark Skin here."

"Chin." The woman said returning the bow. "They call me expensive, among other things."

"And I'm sure you've earned every name you have." The boy said with a smile.

"Your girlfriend passed through awhile ago, heading into the town." The woman told him.

Sokka didn't bother to correct the woman, it would just add confusion.

"Thanks for letting her pass." The young man responded.

"Not getting paid today." The archer explained. "Tau's in the stockade."

"Happy for me, sad for you." He told her. "How much do you get paid for a day?"

"A large silver piece each." The woman told him.

"I don't think you understood my question." The boy said scratching the back of his neck. "I asked how much you got paid, not how much you asked for."

"A bronze each." The woman answered with a rueful smile.

Sokka reached into his robe and pulled out two large silver coins. Holding them up before the archer he asked her,

"I liked to hire you, both of you, from now until tomorrow morning. Interested?"

"Very!" The woman said eyeing the coins. "What's the job."

"Protection." Dark Skin said. "Keep an eye on my… girlfriend and don't let her know you're there, but make sure nothing happens to her."

"Done!" The mercenary said taking the coins.

Chin signaled to the boy to come over to her. Sokka waved Kizzy over as well.

"This is Hu." The archer introduced her son. "Hu this is Dark Skin, our client, we're doing a job for him."

The boy bowed to the young tribesman, who returned the bow.

"Kizzy this is Mom." The blue eyed teen said indicating the mercenary. "Mom this is Kizzy."

"You work fast." Chin said with a smile. "Already added a Traveler girlfriend to your harem. Just how many girlfriends do you have."

This last earned a laugh from Kizzy.

"Too many." The tribesman said ruefully. "But you only have to worry about the bender."

"Alright." The woman answered with a bow.

"Wait!" The young man asked holding up a hand. "A question first. What are those tassels of yarn on your bow strings."

Sokka had not noticed them yesterday, he was a little distracted at that time, but up close to the archer now he had seen two tassels made from strands of yarn attached to the woman's bow string. One tassel a third of the length of the string from the top, and the second, a third of the way from the bottom. He was curious as to what they were for.

"They're to silence the string." The mercenary replied holding up her bow.

The woman pulled one of her heavy blunts from her quiver and aiming straight up, shot the arrow into the air. The tribesman didn't hear a twang when she released the string as he had expected but only a quiet thrum that was hardly noticeable even standing next to the archer.

"Impressive." The swordsman said examining the bow string.

_One tiger seal, two tiger seal…_ Sokka counted to himself. At _five tiger seals,_ the young man looked up raising his left hand and sighted between his thumb and fingers. His hand darted out and down and he turned and handed the arrow back to the archer.

"You just want to shoot him, don't you?" Kizzy said shaking her head.

"A lot!" Chin replied accepting the arrow and returning it to her quiver.

"What?" The young man asked, truly bewildered by the women's frustration with him.

"Enough games, come on Hu we have a job, and this time we've been paid enough to even bleed a little." The mother told her son.

"Mind if I tag along?" The Traveler asked the mercenary, then turning to the tribesman asked, "That is if you don't need me anymore?"

"Fine with me." Dark Skin answered.

"Alright." Chin said grudgingly. "But you may not be able to keep up in that outfit.

"Then don't wait for me." Kizzy replied.

"Come on then." The woman said, taking off at a run.

The boy and the Traveler ran after her up into the fair.

_Well that was one problem taken care of._ Sokka told himself. The archer was the only threat he had worried about. Toph could take care of anyone else that would try to hurt her. The young man had seen his friend only that morning but he was feeling rather lonely. He was already missing the young bender.

* * *

Toph pushed her plate away. She hadn't eaten that much, lunch had not been much fun. Laura had spent the whole time talking about boys and what they liked, telling the small bender how to stand, how to walk, how to giggle, how to laugh, what to say and mostly what not to say.

The young girl was missing the water tribesman more and more. Sokka was fun and didn't talk about boys at all. Also when she ate with Meathead the waitresses were much more attentive.

"Well I guess we should head back to camp." The teenage drummer suggested.

Toph had gotten some real underwear, including under shorts and under tunics, as well as a change of travel clothes. She had even bought a shoulder duffle to carry it all in.

"I guess." The blind girl said standing up.

Laura pulled some coins from the purse and paid the bill. The young girl walked out to the street and felt Corporal Gok waiting patiently as two of his soldiers lead a manacled man away.

"What's up?" Toph asked the squad leader.

"Oh nothing really." The corporal explained. "I heard a thud from around the corner and when I went to investigate I found Wu slumped against the wall with a club in his hand. He's wanted for questioning about that little trouble you had yesterday, so I'm having a couple of troopers take him to the stockade."

Gok decided not to mention the blunt lead headed arrow he found next to the gambler. He left the arrow where he had found it.

"Where's his shirt?" Laura asked catching the end of the explanation as she exited the restaurant.

"I don't think he owns one." The soldier told her. "Well, where to next Princess?"

"Back to camp, right?" Laura asked.

"Not just yet." Toph said thoughtfully.

The small bender had just remembered a clothing shop from yesterday that was nearby that she wanted to visit, and Laura was just the friend she needed to pick out the right outfit.

* * *

"The money will be picked up and deposited in your account with the Order." The old man, who Sokka had discussed literature and then had played Pai Sho with the previous day, told the acolyte of the Order.

"I'll leave a letter with the First Sergeant authorizing you to pick it up." The tribesman replied.

"Is there any verbal report for the Grand Master?" The white bearded man asked.

"No it should all be in this report." The boy said handing over a sealed scroll. "That covers everything from the day we left up till the day before we arrived here. Including the incident in the Si Wong."

"It will go out today." The old man replied.

"Thank you." The acolyte said bowing.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't need us to carry these into camp for you?" Corporal Gok asked the two young women as he handed over their various packages.

The Corporal had explained that the army was only allowed to enter the Travelers' camps under very specific conditions, one of which was an invitation from one of the campers.

"Thank you, you've all been very sweet but we'll be fine from here." Laura told the soldier.

"Princess." The soldier said bowing to the blind bender. "We'll be right here if you need us. Just remember we are just a whistle away."

"Right." Toph replied returning the bow.

With that the two girls turned and having some difficulty carried all their parcels off the road and into the camping area. Once they were in among the caravans the younger of the two asked,

"Is this the right camp?"

"This is one of the merchant House Holds." Laura explained. "I have a friend here and we are going to leave some stuff with her."

"Oh." The blind girl said a little confused as she followed the drummer to a caravan.

The teenage Traveler stopped at the door to a caravan and knocking called out,

"Drina, you in there? It's me Laura."

After a few seconds an attractive young woman, maybe a few years older than Sokka opened the door to the cart and waved to the two girls standing there.

"Hi Laura, who's this?" The young woman asked.

"Hey Drina, this is Misty Green, she's a friend." The drummer introduced the two. "Can we come in? I have a couple of things I want to leave with you, if that's ok?"

"Of course, come on in." The eldest of the three answered, moving into the caravan.

Toph followed the teen up the steps and into the small room. She was blind on the wooden cart, but from what she could tell, it was set up the same way the sisters' caravan was, with a single narrow bed in the place of the bunk beds. It also smelled of perfume and incense, and when the door was closed it was close and crowded inside. Eventually the small bender found a stool next to a dressing table at the far end she could sit on.

"So… what have you got that you don't want big sister to see?" Drina asked the drummer.

"Oh you'll love them." The young girl told her conspiratorially. "You can wear any that will fit you except for this one. I'm wearing it tonight."

Laura began to open packages and lay clothes out on the bed. Toph now understood why the Traveler had been so particular about what was bundled up with what at all the stores they had been too.

"Oooo… I like it." Drina told her putting all the pieces of the outfit together on the bed. "Can I wear it sometime?"

"Anytime you want, just not tonight." The drummer told her. "Tonight Misty and I are going to the Lions camp for Last Night."

"The Lions ehhhh… Oh that reminds me." The older teen said with a gleam in her dark eyes. "Have you heard that there is a water tribesman in the camp? They say he is gorgeous, with blue eyes and dark skin and runs around naked, or at least half naked, all the time."

"Naked?" Laura asked.

"What?" Toph asked.

"Yeah!" Drina told them. "They say he has a girlfriend in the Lions and that he got in a fight with a jerk over her in front of their camp and kicked the jerk's ass in front of Aishe, and now she, Aishe, wants him to join her House Hold."

"Ahh Fuck!" Toph said dropping her head into her hands on the table.

Here the small bender had wasted the entire day shopping for clothes just to make the Idiot jealous while he had been running around naked, finding girlfriends, and having fun kicking people's asses. She hated her life.

* * *

Sokka walked out of the headquarters of Armadillo/Duck Company onto the old Roaming Road. His legs felt as if they would give way at any minute. He was loaded down with everything he and the small bender had brought with them into the town, and all the purchases they had made the day before and most of the ones he had bought today. He had a couple of more stops where he had paid double for special rush orders, before he could return to the camp. He just hoped he would last that long.

* * *

Toph was finally back in Zoltan's camp. There was a lot of bustling around the caravans, everyone was packing up so they could leave early tomorrow morning. Laura had explained that the dark eyed leader insisted on no party for last night, and an early start the next day. He wanted to be the first on the road to avoid the dust and delays of traveling in a long column of carts and he wanted to get the first pick of camp sites at the end of the day.

* * *

Sokka leaned on the long pole he was carrying and rested. The load he was hauling was killing him. The back pack, Toph's bedroll, and all the shoulder bags and duffels were too much and he was exhausted. He told himself that they would be leaving some of it with the Travelers, but that wouldn't be that much. They could at least wear some of the new clothes he had bought, which would be a help. The food would at least get lighter as they ate it. He would make sure to eat a lot on the first few days of walking. He hitched all the various straps a little higher on his shoulders and using the long pole as a staff continued through the fair to the camp ground.

* * *

Toph was sitting on the cushioned stool in Mirela's and Laura's caravan leaning on the dressing table. Shopping with the teenage Traveler had worn her out. The older sister was examining the purchases, laid out on the lower bunk, the two younger girls had made that day. At least the items that Laura had not left at her friend's caravan.

"Really?" The older sister asked holding up a set of items that chinkled.

"It's really nice leather, and the chains are silver." The younger sister defended. "It's really cute."

Toph tried to remember a leather outfit. _Oh yeah, that one!_ The young girl thought. Laura had gotten it just so it would be rejected, knowing that if she got something really extreme her sister might let some of the other things pass.

"No!" Mirela said putting the outfit down off to the side.

The blind girl laid her head onto her hands and took a nap.

* * *

The water tribesman waved to the mercenary as he moved off of the road towards Zoltan's camp.

"Any trouble?" He asked as he passed the archer.

"Not really." Chin replied from her perch on the caravan. "We can't enter the Travelers' camp ground so we are just waiting here. Your girlfriend, well both your girlfriends are in the camp."

"Thanks!" The young man responded to the report.

"No thanks necessary, you're paying." The archer told him.

"Well thanks anyway." The swordsman replied with a smile.

He was about to walk up the slope to the camp when a thought stopped him, and her turned to the woman and asked,

"How do you shoot so fast?"

Chin smiled and climbed down to stand beside the warrior.

"I hold three arrows in my bow hand." She told him pulling arrows from her quiver to illustrate. "I line them up so they are ready to string. It saves a lot of time."

Sokka held out his hand, and the archer handed him an arrow from the group. The young man examined the nock of the arrow carefully for a few seconds.

"What?" Chin asked him.

"Oh… nothing." The young man replied.

"Come on?" The woman asked using her mom voice.

"Well it's just that I had an idea of how you did it." The boy replied, holding up the nock end of the arrow. "But your method is much simpler and easier."

"What was your idea?" She asked obviously intrigued.

"Well it's kind of silly." The boy answered leaning the pole against his shoulder and rubbing the back of his neck. "My idea was that you could sand a little flat spot on the nock, right where your finger goes. That way you could tell just by touch that the arrow was in the correct position to be nocked. Then if you had a long enough thumb nail you could set your nail on the bottom of the nock."

The warrior showed the woman what he had described then held out his free hand for her bow. She thought a moment then handed it over to him.

"Then by feel you could slide the arrow through the bow and the string." The tribesman said letting his actions fit his description. "Catch the arrow with your bow hand, then hit the string with your drawing hand, slide your arm back till the string hits your thumb and you could then guide down your thumb to the nock, nock the arrow and then slide the nock to the center bead and you would be ready to shoot. You could do it all by touch and never take your eye off the target, that way you would just bring the bow and arrow up to your eye, be on target and shoot."

The young man drew the arrow back to his aiming point. He was surprised at how strong a pull the bow had.

"I like it." The mercenary said admiringly.

The woman held out her hands and Sokka handed the bow and arrow back to her.

"That's good!" The archer said rolling the arrow in her fingers. "Especially if you have a moving target. You'd have to practice a lot to get it down just right. But that is a great idea."

"Thanks!" The boy said bowing to her. "I think your way is easier though."

"Yes for the first few shots, but this way you could empty your quiver and never miss a beat." The woman said smiling.

* * *

"Hold still!" Laura told the blind girl.

Toph found the request difficult to comply with. She was sitting in just her underwear, one of her new skimpy sets, while the drummer painted her finger and toe nails. Feeling the brush on her toes kept making the young girl jump.

"There all done." The drummer told her. "Now don't move, and I'll start on your hair."

The blind girl just sighed.

* * *

Sokka walked into the camp and with a grateful sigh dropped his gear by the dancer's wagon. The young man rolled his shoulders and then stretched his arms high over his head. He really had to do some repacking if he was going to carry all that stuff any distance in the morning. He squatted down and began rummaging through his knapsack, he pulled out his dirty clothes bag and found his war fans. The fans he stuck into his sword belt. Standing up he began to look around for the small bender. Toph was a brat but she was his friend and he had missed being with her.

* * *

"There!" The drummer said putting the brush down. "You have such gorgeous hair, you should take more care of it."

"Yeah." The blind girl said, running her hands over her hair which felt silky and smelled of lavender.

Toph was sitting on the stool by the dressing table. The two girls were in their underwear getting ready for the evening festivities that the young drummer had planned. Laura was brushing her own hair when there was a gentle knock on the door of the caravan.

"Toph, you in there? It's me Sokka." A voice said through the door.

The young girl's hands shot up to cover her breasts at the sound of the boy's voice, while her stomach did a very energetic flip and her heart leapt up into her throat.

"You can't come in." The blind girl said, a little panic edging her voice.

"Sorry." The boy said looking at the ground.

He had made no move to enter the caravan, but he still felt guilty for some reason.

"It's just that I was going to wash some clothes." The tribesman said to the door. "Well actually there is someone here that washes stuff, and I was going to offer to have her do yours too if you had any."

"A… sure." The young girl said standing up and feeling her way towards the door. "You can take anything in my bag."

"Don't forget this." Laura said surprising the bender from behind.

Toph hated being in the caravan, she couldn't use her bending in the wooden cart.

The young girl felt a bundle of clothes being pressed into her arms.

"It's all your travel clothes and things from last night." The drummer explained. "Oh wait this too. Your dance outfit from last night too."

The blind girl had a hard time holding onto the two bundles, things kept slipping out of her grasp as she stood by the end of the caravan.

"I'll get the door." Laura offered.

Toph felt a breath of cool air hit her face and bare legs as she stood there fumbling.

"I got it." She heard Sokka say as something slipped out of her grasp.

The tribesman's voice was clear now and a little below her. The young girl wasn't sure what she had dropped but it had been small and silky.

"Whoa…" The young man said as he picked up the intimate item.

"Here!" Toph said as she gave up and dropped the dirty clothes on the boy.

"Aaa… thanks." The boy said looking up and grabbing the bundle.

Sokka's first impression was that the beautiful young girl was standing there naked before him. The white silk of her underwear matched her lovely skin tone. Then his eye was drawn to the shining metal on her stomach. It was quiet for a few heart beats, that would be a few normal heart beats, not the fluttering very fast heart beats that both the boy and girl were currently experiencing before the boy asked,

"Aaaa… Toph… What's that?"

"What's what?" The girl asked her fists on her hips.

"On your stomach." The boy answered, his voice showing both surprise and wonder.

The blind girl's hand went to her abdomen and found the dangling chain of metal attached to her naval. That's when she realized that she was standing in front of Meathead wearing only three small pieces of shear silk tied onto her important parts with some string and a small gold chain of tiny medallions hanging from a hole in her belly button.

_Crap!_ She thought, as the blood rushed to her face and chest.

The blind girl grabbed for the door to slam it in the boys face but the door was jerked out of her hand. She heard a giggle from Laura. Toph grabbed the door with both hands but it still wouldn't budge. She next tried to hide behind the door but the young drummer, laughing the whole time, used her hip to push the small bender back out into the open doorway.

"Well… I gotta be going." The young man said grabbing up the clothes and running around the corner of the cart.

Sokka knew that look on the young girl's face and he did not want to be there to suffer the consequences.

Laura was laughing so hard that she could no longer resist Toph's frantic efforts to slam the door shut and so the drummer just let go as she slumped to the floor. The young man heard the door slam behind him as he ran for his life.

* * *

The swordsman stood by the side of the caravan holding the bundle of clothes down below his waist. He suddenly realized what he was doing and dropped the bundle to the ground. This resulted in a new problem and he turned himself toward the wagon, to hide his predicament from the rest of the camp ground. It was really starting to hurt, so he quickly reached down and rearranged himself so he had more freedom and room to expand.

_You're disgusting!_ The young man told himself.

_Yeah, I know._ He answered himself wearily.

_She's just a kid!_

_And what a kid!_ A new voice in his head said in a low growl.

_Stop that!_ The first voice said.

_Did you see when she turned to close the door?_ The second voice asked.

_You're not helping!_ The first voice admonished.

_So beautiful! It's like a tart white moon/peach you just want to sink your teeth into._ The second voice said waxing lyrical.

"Oh shut up both of you!" Sokka said aloud banging his forehead against the wall of the caravan.

"Why does my life have to suck so much?" The young man asked the universe.

* * *

"You should have let me darken your nipples." Laura said from the floor still laughing. "Then he'd still be standing there."

"Shut up!" Toph told the teen.

"Oh come on." The drummer said standing up. "You loved it."

"It was embarrassing!" The younger girl cried, nervously fingering her naval piercing.

"He liked what he saw." The teen sang as she walked past the smaller girl to the dressing table.

"How do you know?" The bender asked.

"You could hear it in his voice, even behind the door." The Traveler said sitting down in front of the mirror.

"If he likes me, then why did he run away?" The small girl wanted to know.

"Because he's nice, silly. He didn't want to embarrass you." The teen replied.

"He is nice." The younger girl said thoughtfully.

The two girls heard a loud "Thunk" just then, as if something hard had struck the side of the caravan. They both looked towards the sound. After a moment's pause Laura turned back to the mirror and sadly observed,

"You're lucky. I never seem to attract nice boys."

* * *

Bela was packing up the caravan for tomorrow when he saw Gia stride into the camp ground. He knew she had been training all afternoon and from the smile on her face she had defeated all comers. Even stained with sweat and dirt he thought she never looked more beautiful than when she had had a good day of fighting. That's when she looked so alive it broke the young man's heart.

The tall woman climbed up into her caravan and began undressing. It had been a great day. She had seen that asshole Boldo humbled, had even seen Aishe taken down a notch, and she had kicked ass all afternoon. The blood was singing in her veins as she kicked off her boots and tore her clothes off. There was only one thing that could make this day better and that would be Dark Skin. She purred at the thought of the handsome young man. She didn't deceive herself. She had seen the young water tribesman fight and he was fast and clever, but she thought she could take him. And once she had, she would have him. A low growl escaped her throat as she thought about it.

"Can I help?" Bela asked as he came into the small room of the caravan.

"You can wash my back." The woman told him, as she pulled the last of her sweaty clothes off and stood naked before the young man, pinning her hair up.

Bela poured water from a pitcher into a basin and taking soap and a wash cloth began to vigorously scrub the slim woman's back. He knew better than to be gentle with her. She liked everything to be harsh and fast.

"I can't feel it otherwise." She had once told him.

The young man squatted down to scrub her buttocks and legs. He noted the scars she wore. Most on her forearms but a few on her body and legs as well. He could see that she had shaved everywhere that morning, even between her legs. His heart sank. She would be on the hunt tonight.

Gia turned around and held her hands out for the cloth and the soap. Bela handed them over and turned to leave the caravan, while the twenty something woman continued her bath.

"Did you change the sheets?" Gia asked, stopping the young man.

"Yes, and remade the bed." Bela answered, turning to look at her, as she scrubbed her chest.

"Good." She told him. "I'll need the caravan tonight so you'll be on your own."

"Right." The young man said, watching her move down to her stomach.

"Thanks." The fighter said, as she moved the cloth down between her legs scrubbing hard.

Bela turned and walked out of the caravan.

* * *

"Excuse me." Sokka asked the leader of the House Hold.

Zoltan turned and smiled at the sound of the young man's voice. The dark eyed man had really taken a liking to the odd stranger and was glad he had returned.

"Deep Blue." The Traveler greeted the younger man, bowing.

Sokka returned the bow then held out the long pole he had been carrying as well as a large heavy roll of cloth.

"I got these today." Dark Skin said holding out the items to the Traveler. "You don't have to use them but I just wanted to thank you and well everyone for welcoming us into your family."

Zoltan unrolled the heavy cloth. It was a banner, professionally made, edged with a gold border with fringe on the top and bottom. In the center on a light green field was a golden drum with a white head. Above the drum were two of the Traveler's knives, blades crossed. At the top were the characters for "Rolling Thunder". At the bottom were the characters for "Thunder is always preceded by Lightning". It was beautifully made.

"Excellent!" The man said, his dark eyes glistening. "Beautiful! We will be proud to display this as the banner of our House Hold."

"Oh good." The younger man said, smiling.

"But this must have cost too much. Especially if you had it done today." The man with the golden ear rings said.

"Oh no, it didn't cost us anything. The gamblers might be a little unhappy." The swordsman said in an embarrassed fashion. "Besides we owe you all so much. You took in two strangers and kept us safe. I don't know how well we would have done if you hadn't. Chin is scary."

That got a laugh from the Traveler and the tribesman.

"Well let's put it up." The dark eyed man said, reaching for the pole.

The two young men tied the banner onto the cross bar of the long pole, sank the butt spike into the ground and lashed the pole to the corner of Zoltan's caravan. The two smiled as they stood back to admire their handy work. Behind them they heard a woman's trill of celebration. They turned to see Kizzy walking up to them. They also noticed that everyone in the camp was now looking up at the banner.

The leader of Rolling Thunder turned to the dark skinned teen. He was about to bow to the younger man when he remembered something. Instead he held out his hand to the teen. Sokka seeing the gesture reached out and grasped the man with the golden ear rings by the arm and shook it.

"Excellent!" Zoltan told the boy, grasping the tribesman's shoulder with his free hand and shaking his arm with the other.

* * *

Toph was starving. She was standing in Mirela's caravan fully dressed in her "Party Outfit" as the young drummer circled her in the cramped space. The young bender had not had anything to eat since her early lunch that day and it was now after sundown and her stomach was growling.

"When do we get to eat?" The blind girl asked.

"Never!" The teen replied tugging at the younger girl's clothes to make them hang just right. "If you eat, it will make your stomach stick out, and boys don't like that."

Toph had been given a lot of dolls as a young girl but she had never been very fond of them. She had a feeling that Laura had played with hers a lot as a little girl.

"Perfect!" The drummer pronounced finally. "How do I look?"

"I can't tell you how beautiful you look right now." The blind girl replied, with only a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"Thanks!" Laura gushed obliviously. "Ok, Mirela will inspect us and then we can go and have some fun."

With that the drummer took the younger girl's hand and led her out of the caravan.

Toph sighed with relief as her bare feet hit the ground. She stopped dead, pulling Laura up short, as the blind bender sunk her toes into the earth and sent out a wave of bending into the world and felt the wonderful return of her art. It had been hours since she had been able to use her skill, since she had been able to sense the world as she was meant to sense it, and she luxuriated in the feeling of the world coming into existence again.

"Come on." The teen said tugging on the twelve year olds hand.

The blind girl allowed herself to be pulled around to the side of the caravan where Mirela and Zoltan were waiting for them. She also felt someone else there, sitting against one of the cart wheels. Meathead, who stood up at the two girls approach.

"Well you both look very nice." The older sister told them, as she inspected the pair.

"Beautiful!" Zoltan corrected.

"Toph you look…" Sokka began to say but was cut off before he could finish.

"Old!" The small bender said.

"I was going to say elegant and beautiful." The tribesman corrected. "I know it shouldn't but it always surprises me. You make it look so effortless, your grace and beauty..."

The young man grew quiet. He then reached out and took the young girl's hands in his own.

"Beautiful!" Was all he said.

The girl looked down for a second, then coughed quietly and raised her head, a quizzical expression on her face.

"Meathead, what are you wearing." She asked her friend.

Sokka was wearing the dark pants, white blousy shirt, black vest, and dark tasseled sash of the Travelers, over which he had on his weapons belt slung low on his hips.

"Oh, this is one of Zoltan's outfits." The boy explained dropping her hands. "He leant it to me while our clothes are being washed."

"And he looks very nice in it." Mirela observed. "It suits him."

"Very dashing." Laura said appreciatively.

"Remember!" Mirela told the two girls, while giving her sister a hard look. "We are leaving early tomorrow so I want you back by midnight at the latest."

"Yes Mirela." Laura said.

"Misty Green." The dancer said taking Toph's hand. "I'm counting on you as the more mature one, to keep my sister out of trouble."

"I will do what I can." The blind bender said, bowing to the young woman.

"Alright then, go and have fun." The older sister said shaking her head ruefully.

"And don't get caught." Zoltan added with a laugh.

The two girls laughed at the dark eyed man's joke, and Laura took the small girl's hand, but before they could walk off they were stopped by Sokka's voice.

"A… I… I just wanted…" The young man said pulling three small paper wrapped parcels from inside his sash. "Well I got these for you two…" indicating the two sisters.

The tribesman began to fumble with the packets examining each, he then handed one to the dancer and one to the drummer. The third he held in his hand.

"Just wanted to say thank you for well… everything." The blue eyed teen finally finished.

The two sisters unwrapped the parcels and each drew out a silver pendant on a silver chain. Each pendant held a polished black stone in the center.

"I thought they matched your eyes." The boy said apologetically.

"It's beautiful!" Mirela said examining it. "So simple and elegant. I love it."

"Oooo… This is the nicest present anyone has ever given me." The younger sister said holding up hers. "Thank you so much!"

Laura jumped up and throwing her arms around the young man's neck hugged him, then pulling her head back kissed him on the cheek. The young girl then broke the hug and handing the pendant to the tribesman saying,

"Put it on!"

The drummer turned and gathering her hair up into her hands, lifted it off of her neck lowering her head. The young man looked confused, then understanding shifted the last packet up to his mouth and holding it between his teeth used both hands to attempt to open the clasp on the chain.

"Not real good with these little things." The boy apologized, the parcel flapping as he spoke.

"Let me get that." Mirela said handing her necklace to Zoltan.

The dancer took the pendant and quickly had it secured around her sisters neck.

"My turn." Zoltan said holding out the necklace Mirela had given him.

The dancer turned and the leader of the House Hold lowered the necklace over her head. The woman gathered up her hair away from her neck.

"EEEh! You Too!" Sokka said around the packet in his mouth, as the Traveler fastened the chain around the beautiful dancer's neck.

The tribesman squatted down and began to rummage in his shoulder bag. He stood up with the package still in his teeth but with two black and silver items in his hands.

"These are for you." The swordsman said around the packet as he extended the two new items towards the dark eyed man. "They were the closest I could find to the ones on the banner."

Zoltan reached out but then drew his hands back as he recognized the objects in the boy's hands.

"Wait…" The Traveler said searching in his sash for something.

A look of desperation began to grow on the ear ringed man's face, as his search grew more frantic. He obviously was not finding what he was looking for. The blue eyed teen just stood there looking confused, the soggy packet hanging from his mouth.

Understanding spread across Mirela's face as she saw what was going on.

"Don't worry I've got it." The dancer said dashing into the caravan.

A few moments later the dancer gracefully jumped down from the open door and dashed over to her boyfriend handing him something.

"Thanks!" Zoltan said with relief, accepting the offering.

The dark eyed man turned to the swordsman and held out his closed fist.

"We have a custom." The man explained in a slightly formal tone. "Friends never give blades to each other, in fear that the sharp edge will cut their friendship. Therefore please allow me to buy these blades from you."

With this last the leader of Rolling Thunder opened his fist revealing two copper coins. Sokka shifted the items to his right hand and offering them to the dark eyed man, accepting the coins with his left.

"Beautiful!" Mirela said leaning in to examine the two knives.

They were two clasp knives in the style of the Travelers, with black polished handles with silver caps. Zoltan flicked his wrists and there was a double click as the blades sprang out, silver in the fire light.

"Excellent." The Traveler said. "The weight, the action, the feel. They are perfect!"

"I hoped you would like them." The young man said, in a muffled tone. "The grips are ebony, I worried they might be too heavy."

"Not at all!" Zoltan said closing the knives and pushing them into his sash. "They are perfect."

"Well I guess that's it." The young man said with the packet still in his teeth.

"Ahhh… Isn't there something else?" Mirela asked tapping her lips.

"No…" The tribesman said thoughtfully. "That's everything."

"I think you have one more present." Zoltan mused. "Maybe for Misty Green?"

The boy looked at the Traveler and pulled the packet out of his mouth to answer,

"No…" The boy said, searching his sash. "I think that's it."

Sokka then returned the packet to his mouth. A second later he struck his forehead with his palm and said,

"Crap!"

The young man stepped up to the blind bender and pulling the disintegrating paper parcel from his lips offered it to the young girl.

"This is for you." He told his friend.

Toph, who had been standing there with her arms crossed, a scowl on her face, tapping her foot, reached out and snatched the soggy offering from the outstretched hand. She tore what was left of the paper off and felt a light metal chain and small round piece of stone, maybe two or three centimeters across, with a square hole cut in the center.

"It's a jade coin on a silver chain." The fifteen year old told her. "I saw it and thought of you, you know, earth kingdom, coin, jade, eyes, simple, beautiful, you know."

"A… Thanks." The young girl said, fingering the necklace.

"I know you don't like jewelry." The boy explained defensively. "But it matched your eyes so perfectly and you don't have to wear it if you don't want to."

"No, I like it." The bender said.

"Put it on her." Mirela suggested.

"If you want?" Sokka asked.

"Sure." The blind girl answered holding out the present.

The boy took the necklace and after a little fumbling opened the clasp. He examined the jade coin for a second then turned it around, there seemed to be a right side and a wrong side to the pendant. Remembering how Zoltan had placed the other necklace around the dancer's neck, the young man moved around behind the small girl and lifted the pendant up and over her head. The bender lifted her hair up and out of the way. Her breath caught as she felt the tribesman's hands touch the back of her neck as he worked at closing the chain. Finally he got it clasped and dropped his hands. The jade pendant hung comfortably just below the hollow of the young girl's throat.

Toph let go of her hair and touched the cool stone hanging high on her chest, her face down cast towards the ground to hide the hot blush on her cheeks and the small smile on her lips.

Sokka watched her reaction and unbidden the words came to him and passed through his lips,

"Jade eyes to the earth

Finger traces the green stone

Lips rise as the dawn"

Toph raised her head towards him and showed him her smile.

"Was that a poem?" Zoltan asked.

"A haiku." The boy answered still looking into Toph's misty green eyes.

"He makes them up." The blind girl explained.

"Beautiful." Mirela told him.

"What's this on the back?" The young girl asked still rubbing the jade pendant.

"Oh… that… it's nothing." The boy answered dropping his eyes to the ground.

"Meathead!" The girl warned.

"I had them engrave a… boomerang on the back." The boy said apologetically. "I can have them take it off."

"A what?" Laura asked.

"A boomerang." The blind girl explained. "They always come back to you."

"Yeah." Sokka said.

"Well I guess I'll wear it." Toph said, still rubbing the stone. "But that doesn't mean that I like it."

"Got it." Sokka said.

"Well we've got to get going or the party will be over before we get there." The young drummer said poking the twelve year old in the arm.

"Right." The blind girl said letting go of the pendant. "Can't miss the party."

"Midnight!" Mirela said.

"We'll remember." Her sister replied taking the bender by the hand and leading her out into the great camp ground.

Sokka watched the two young girls walk off into the darkness.

"Maybe I should…" The young man said taking a step after them, but was stopped by a hand taking his arm.

"…Should join us by the fire." Zoltan said dragging the boy away.

"She will be fine." Mirela said taking Sokka's other arm. "She can take care of herself, and she's with Laura."

"That's one of the things that worries me." The tribesman said reluctantly following the two Travelers.

"Let her have some fun." The dark eyed man said.

"She's not a child anymore." The dancer said.

* * *

Gia stood in her caravan looking at herself in her small hand mirror. She was in her hunting clothes, light silk pants, cut low on her hips, light silk high waisted, sleeveless blouse, surcoat, and black boots. She had not bothered with a breast wrapper or a loin cloth. They would just get in the way.

The knife fighter put down the mirror and picked up the small bottle on the table and took a sip of the strong drink. _Not too much!_ She told herself.

She hoped Dark Skin put up a good fight tonight. She liked it when they fought.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Yes, yes, I know a week late and Toph hasn't even gotten to the party yet. I know it's ten thousand words. I'm OCD what can I say. I have to fill in all the blanks and not leave anything hanging and set stuff up for later chapters. I should just cut half of it out and make it shorter and easier to read. But it's me and I'm crazy.

I swear by Tui and La they will be out of the Traveler's camp by the end of the next chapter.

To: Kori J; Thank you very much, sorry Chi Unblocking will be in the next chapter, honest.

To Kagey; Yup Toph has a little dangly belly piercing. She still can't believe it. You don't want to draw what Sokka dreams about at night. He's a fifteen year old boy. That would be just too wrong. :-) I love your drawing for the rolling thunder speech.

To Mental Traveler; Thanks so much, I only hope you enjoy these ten thousand words where nothing happens.

To Nerfornothing; Thank you so much, those are great words to read in a review. I hope I don't disappoint you with this and the later chapters to follow.

Please go to Deviant Art and check out the wonderful fanart made by Kagey. I would include the link but I don't know how.

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	39. Chapter 39

I'll Walk You Home pt 39

Chapter 13

pt. 1

Fanning the Flames

* * *

Laura dragged Toph into Drina's caravan. The young bender hated going in, now she was blind again. She felt her way past the drummer's older teen friend and made her way to the back, where she sat on the stool and leaned on the dressing table.

"Come on Misty, we've got to change." The teen Traveler told the blind girl as she began to pull her own clothes off.

"I just spent two hours getting into this outfit." The small girl said. "I'm not taking it off just to put something else on."

"You have too, if you're going to wear your red under wraps." The drummer explained.

"I don't know or care what color they are. What I have on is fine." The twelve year old told her.

Unconsciously the blind girl began to finger the pendant hanging from her neck, her calloused thumb tracing the inscribed boomerang on the back.

"Well if you're not wearing your reds, then is it ok if I wear mine?" The teen asked.

"Sure." The young girl answered.

"Well those are new!" Drina said pointing to the drummer's chest.

"These…" The younger teen giggled, while flipping her nipple rings with her fingers.

"Yes those…" The eldest of the three said suggestively. "And what's that on your ass?"

"A symbol of my art." The drummer said in an attempt at a cultured accent, while shaking her butt.

"If it shows through your pants I think it will be more of a target than a symbol." Drina said, slapping the teen's buttock.

"Ow, I didn't think of that." Laura said rubbing the tender spot.

"That's nice." Drina commented moving over to the blind girl sitting at the back of the caravan.

"Oh… That, yes her boyfriend gave that to her." Laura told her friend while getting dressed.

It took Toph a moment to figure out what the other two girls were talking about. She dropped her hand from the jade coin and told them,

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Are you sure?" Drina asked, examining the pendant.

"Yeah." Toph said, letting a little irritation enter her voice.

"It's just that that necklace is really nice for a friendly gift." The older teen said standing up. "And jade, when given by someone who loves you, imparts good fortune and protection, which is enhanced when it is given with silver."

"I didn't know that." The blind girl quietly said as her fingers found the jade coin again.

"The question is did your friend know it." Drina said turning back to the drummer to help her dress.

_Of course he knew it._ The young girl told herself, rubbing her thumb on the etched boomerang. _Idiot knows everything._ Toph felt the blood rush to her cheeks and her eyes began to burn with unshed tears. _It really isn't fair!_ The young girl told herself, her stupid friend could somehow get her all emotional over silly little stuff when he wasn't even there.

* * *

Sokka sat by the fire leaning on his toppled bench eating a bowl of goulash. He was glad he had bought some spoons earlier that day. They were great eating utensils.

"Haven't grown tired of our pleasures yet?" Gia asked.

Sokka leaned back and looked up to see the knife fighter standing behind the bench he was leaning on.

"It's still good." The young man said with a smile.

"Some men get tired of the same thing night after night." The woman told him.

"If you have a good base like this." The boy said holding up his bowl. "Then you just have to add some new spices to change it around and make it new and different."

"I like something different every night." The tall woman said.

Gia pulled her overdress aside and stepped over the bench. The young man turned his head and leaned away.

"Don't worry, I won't kick you." The knife fighter said, stopping with one leg over the bench.

"Better to be safe." The young man said, still averting his eyes from the tall woman.

"Suit yourself." Gia said stepping fully over the bench and walking to the pot over the fire.

* * *

Toph pulled her hand down and away from her jade pendant as she walked along with the two other girls. _You're going to wear it out!_ She told herself. But within a minute her right hand had found the stone around her neck again. Her finger tracing the smooth stone, and her thumb tracing the image cut into the back. The young girl loved the feel of the stone. How smooth it was on top and the boomerang cut into the back. It's weight on her skin. It was the second most wonderful thing she had ever had. It was right up there with her space earth armband.

"This should be a good party." Drina said quietly to the blind girl, pulling the bender out of her reverie, as the trio walked to the Lions camp site. "People are still celebrating the end of the war. And from what I've heard this has been a good fair. Everyone has made a lot of money, except for some of the gamblers. I've heard that a pair of grifters came through the fair yesterday and out conned the con men for more than five hundred gold."

"I heard it wasn't that much." The small girl said with a smile, touching her pendant again.

All three were dressed as dancers, though Laura, who was in the lead, playing her drum and dancing as she walked, was in a much more extreme version of the traditional outfit. Her surcoat ended at her knees and was very narrow and did not cover her hips and legs at all. The drummer's pant legs were split up the side from the cuff to the waistband, _which should really be called a hip band_, Toph thought to herself as she pulled her own pants up again.

Toph felt the party before she heard it. Hundreds of feet, dancing, stomping, walking or just shifting sent a strong signal through the earth. Then she heard the drums pounding away. As they got closer she heard the other instruments both string and wind. It wasn't so much music as a great jumble of songs and singing. The voices where the last, though they may have been the unnoticed first, it was as if a low rumble filled the air as two hundred people sang, shouted, spoke, and even whispered.

The three girls were ushered through the gate into the main camp ground.

"Tits don't have to pay." Drina whispered to the young girl as they walked between the guards.

The large open area of the camp was divided up into thirds with great bonfires burning in the center of each group. The loudest music and noise in general was coming from the people around the right hand fire. From her bending Toph determined that that group was made up of the youngest people, young men and women in their teens and twenties.

The left hand group was the next in age and was nearly as loud as the right hand group.

The center fire was in front of a collection of awnings and caravans, it was the smallest group and the quietest with a lot more benches and chairs, with older people sitting and talking mostly. There was also a long line of wooden tables between the entrance and the middle fire. There, people from all three age groups came and went and wonderful aromas caused the hungry bender's stomach to growl.

"How about some food?" The blind girl asked her companions over the noise.

"Not in this outfit!" Laura exclaimed. "What I want is wine."

"You go ahead." Drina told the bender. "And we'll meet you over there…" With this the older teen pointed off to the right. "… Where the drummers are."

Toph wasn't sure if they were abandoning her or if she was abandoning them, but she was too hungry to really care.

"Ok." She replied, and walked over to the food tables.

The blind girl walked along the tables, being jostled by the other party goers, and smelling the different dishes. The tables were wood and even though the bowls and plates on it were fire glazed clay for the most part she was having a very hard time discerning what any of the dishes were. She was getting frustrated and angry at the whole process. If Sokka had been there he would have just told her what everything was and then made a plate for her, but her friend wasn't here. She fingered her jade pendant as she walked the line and listened to her stomach growl.

* * *

Sokka was working on his second bowl of goulash, but he hadn't gotten very far. He just wasn't that hungry. He kept looking over his shoulder to where he had last seen the metalbender walk off into the night. He was just about to get up and go after her when Gia's voice pulled his attention back towards the fire.

"Sorry?" He asked the tall knife fighter silhouetted against the fire, her form clearly visible through her thin clothes, as she stood before him.

"I said move over I want to talk to M'ela." The woman said kicking the boy's hip, and none too softly.

The young swordsman sidled over to his right making a space for the tall woman, who sat down next to him rubbing her hip against his as she turned slightly to her left to speak to the dancer sitting beside the leader of the House Hold.

"So M'ela…" The slim woman asked. "… what do you think of Deep Blue's cock? From what I've seen it's as nice as Z's. Are you ok?"

This last was asked of the water tribe teen who was coughing violently. The tall woman slapped him hard on the back two or three times to help him get his breath back.

Zoltan raised an eyebrow at the fighter who smirked in reply.

"Well…" Mirela said thoughtfully, with a sly smile, casually laying a hand on the thigh of her boyfriend. "… I hate to speculate with such little evidence, but I would not be surprised. Deep Blue might even be bigger, he is young and is already taller than Z, and he has such large hands, not to mention his feet. I'd have a better idea if his pants were a little tighter."

The young man in question was sputtering quietly, with a very red face. The idea that someone had actually looked at his crotch, let alone that that someone was a girl, had never entered the young man's mind. This discussion was an entirely new world to the boy. That girls actually thought about such things, let alone talked about them was a disquieting revelation to the tribesman.

_Katara would never think about guys'… things…_ The tribesman told himself. _Let alone talk about it with anyone. Of course all the girls had been in that one bedroom for weeks. No! Come on! Sis and Toph would never think or talk about… Well There was also Suki… and Mai for a while… Naw… Never! And Ty Lee… Naw… Well maybe Ty Lee…? Naw… Of course Mai is a little strange sometimes, the way she would look at Zuko… Naw… And Ty was always looking at him with that funny look on her face… No! No! Definitely not. No Way! Well…_ The slim woman's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

"That's right." Gia said remembering, toying with the goulash in her bowl. "You didn't see Z and Dark Skin on the training ground. It was a very revealing demonstration the two of them gave."

"Let alone the little look you got in the wash tent." The dark eyed man said.

"Oh it wasn't little." The knife fighter said, pulling up a spoonful of food. "It wasn't little at all."

The tall woman pushed the spoon into her mouth with a quiet "Mmmmm" sound.

"Wash tent?" Mirela asked Zoltan with a raised eyebrow.

"Length is overrated though." The knife fighter said as she chewed her goulash, holding up her spoon to emphasize her point. "I'll take thick over long any day."

"It's nice to have both." The dancer said smiling, while running her hand up and down her boyfriend's thigh.

"True…" Gia said with a low growl in her voice as she turned to the young tribesman sitting next to her.

Sokka who had been trying to take a nonchalant mouthful of food at that point began choking again. The tall woman pounded him on the back again, while the dancer giggled at the young man's discomfiture.

"Here try some of this." The knife fighter said laying her bowl and spoon on the ground and pulling a small bottle out from under her surcoat.

"Not that beet juice of yours!" Zoltan said

"It's good!" Gia responded handing the uncorked flask to the young swordsman.

"Be careful with that stuff." The dark eyed man warned the teen.

Sokka set down his bowl and took the proffered bottle. Heeding the older man's advice he took a small sip, but Gia reached out and tilted the flask higher dumping a large dose of the liquid into the boy's mouth before he could lower the bottle.

Dark Skin felt his face scrunch up in an uncontrollable sour implosion. He had to get this stuff out of his mouth as soon as possible so he swallowed it in one gulp. It landed in his stomach like one of Azula's balls of hot blue flame, and exploded there. A shiver, and not the good kind, ran through the tribesman's body.

"That's awful!" The young man said in a strangled voice as he handed the bottle back to its owner.

"Oh it's not so bad." The woman said taking a drink herself with similar results. "I've had much worse tasting stuff in my mouth and still managed to swallow it."

"You say that like it's a good thing." The boy remarked taking a spoon full of goulash to clear the taste from his mouth as another shudder racked his body.

"All the various and numerous men I was with on those occasions thought it was." The knife fighter said handing the flask off to the dancer.

Sokka felt a third shudder run through him.

"You carry a lot of dangerous things under that outfit." The young man observed.

"I'm saving the best for last." The tall woman said with a low laugh.

"Scary thought." The teen said in reply.

"Perhaps we should change the subject." Zoltan opined, taking a sip of the strong liquor. "The current one seems to be dangerous dinner conversation for our young friend."

"Oh! Like you two haven't, at some point, sat around this same fire and talked about our tits and asses for hours." The dancer said taking the flask back from her boyfriend and after taking a sip herself handed it to the slim woman.

"Well…" The dark eyed man started but faded out before he could come up with an effective defense.

"If we did." The tribesman said taking up the slack. "It was on a much higher, philosophical level then the current conversation."

"Oh?" The dancer asked.

"Yes!" The boy affirmed. "We may have discussed feminine attributes but only in relation to a Platonic Ideal. Not any particular female or attribute."

Sokka shook his head a little. He could feel that stuff he had drunk eating away at his entire body, and his head was feeling a little funny.

"That's right." Zoltan agreed, though he did sound a little unsure of what he was agreeing to. "And not just tits and ass, we talked about legs."

"Oh legs too?" The dancer asked.

"And eyes." The water tribe teen added in a wistful voice. "And smiles…, and laughs…"

"What about pussies?" The tall woman asked.

"No…" The fifteen year old said trying to remember. "No we didn't talk about pussies."

Sokka was surprised to note that he no longer felt so embarrassed by the subject of the conversation.

"So are you a tits or an ass man?" The knife fighter asked leaning back on the bench, and pushing her chest out.

The young man's eyes shot down for an instant at the question. They had acted of their own accord and as soon as the boy was aware of it, he dragged them back up to the tall woman's face, but in that instant he had easily seen, through the open blouse, one of the young woman's small but perfect breasts, including the light red nipple crowning it.

"I like women." The swordsman was finally able to say. "Each one is different and wonderful in her own way."

"Oh, so you're an ass man." The slim woman said with a smile.

"I like a nice tight ass on a guy." Mirela said.

"Muscular arms are nice." Gia added into the conversation.

"True." The dancer said. "I like muscles. A strong hard chest and stomach with broad shoulders on top."

"You really should have come to the training ground." The knife fighter told the dancer. "Here tell you what, Dark Skin stand up."

With that the tall woman stood up and beckoned the teen to his feet. Sokka, who had a bad feeling of where this was going, slowly stood up next to the slim woman.

"Let's show M'ela what she missed." Gia told him as she moved around behind the young man and with a quick motion tore off his vest.

"Whoa!" The boy called out moving away from the tall woman trying unsuccessfully to pull his vest back on.

There was a cheer as Gia stood holding the young man's vest high over her head as a prize, then she threw it to the circle around the fire. Sokka felt surprised and betrayed as he saw Kizzy catch the garment and trilling swing it over her head.

The tall woman jumped forward and grabbed at the front of the boy's shirt, pulling at the buttons.

"Hey! Hey!" The tribesman shouted trying to fend her off. "That's a borrowed shirt."

"Then don't pull away." The knife fighter ordered. "Besides I'll buy Z a new one."

Gia began to tear at the buttons, and Sokka heard the sound of the cloth ripping. He grabbed the woman's wrists to prevent any more damage to the shirt. From behind him he heard a woman shout,

"Nadia grab his arm."

The tribesman turned towards the sound and saw an attractive twenty something woman running towards him, he then felt a pair of small hands from behind him grab his right arm, he looked over that shoulder and saw a tall teenage girl with a big smile hugging his arm to her chest.

Gia took the opening given to her by the distraction to twist her hands free of the young man's grip, then grabbing the cloth in both hands, tore the front of his shirt open and up out of his sash. The swordsman turned to the knife fighter as "Twenty Something" grabbed his left arm.

Sokka remembered seeing a small pod of young tiger seals close in on a lone penguin once when he had been out hunting. He had a sudden sympathy for that penguin now.

Nadia felt herself being lifted off the ground as the young man swung his arm towards the knife fighter. Gia had moved in, her face only centimeters from Dark Skins as she pulled the shirt open and off of his shoulders. There was the sound of more cloth tearing.

"That's my good shirt." Zoltan moaned from his place on the ground.

"That was your good shirt." Mirela said with a smile.

Then in a quiet voice she commented to just her boyfriend,

"Gia's wild tonight."

"She saw Deep Blue fight today." The dark eyed man responded just as quietly. "A real fight with Boldo and her blood is up. Maybe I should stop it."

"Too late now." The dancer told him, besides Mirela was enjoying the show.

Finally Sokka was able to throw the three women off of him, but his shirt was in tatters and in their hands. There was cheering and trilling as the handsome dark skinned teen stood bare from the waist up and the two girls danced around the fire swinging the pieces of his shirt above their heads in triumph. He had scratches on his chest and back, and one of the women had grabbed his crotch at some point in the divestment and he was feeling particularly vulnerable.

"Oh I am sorry I missed that training fight." Mirela called out as she applauded. "You know what I'd really like? I shake my ass for every man between here and Ba Sing Se. I want a man to shake his ass in front of me for once."

"Sorry!" Sokka said feeling self conscious with all the eyes of the group now on him. "Not much of a dancer. I'll sit down now."

"Not yet!" Gia called out. "We have to give M'ela a show."

That's when the young man heard the double click of two blades locking into place. He turned to see the tall woman with a knife in each hand, desire on her face, and her eyes glinting in the fire light.

"Let's dance for her Dark Skin." The woman said with a feral smile on her lips.

* * *

"Princess?" A man's voice behind Toph asked her.

"I'm not a princess!" The blind girl said turning on the man.

Using her bending the girl could feel that it was a large heavyset, well fat really, old man behind her with a long full beard.

"Sorry." The man said bowing. "I met you and your friend yesterday at the theater and then again when he played a game of Pai Sho with me."

"Oh yeah, you're the fat old man." Toph said remembering him now. "Or maybe I should call you The Other Fat Old Man, since I already know a fat old man in Ba Sing Se."

"Actually I would prefer it if you could call me Lee." The man told her, with a dry chuckle, as he bowed to her again.

"Oh sure…" The small girl said, folding her arms over her chest.

"No really, I actually am one of the innumerable and ubiquitous Lees." The man said.

"Ok Lee." The blind girl said, relaxing. "But I prefer The Other Fat Old Man."

"Thank you." Lee said bowing. I'm sorry I did not greet you sooner but I did not recognize you at first, you look much changed since yesterday."

"Yeah! Old!" The girl said with a snort.

"Older, yes, but just as beautiful." The old man said as he stepped up to her. "Now may I help you, in some way?"

After some discussion Lee prepared a plate for the young bender and the two found a bench and small table where they could eat. The food was good and Toph ate with some gusto. She especially enjoyed the garlic sausage which she had never had before. Lee had even gotten her another serving. When she had finished the young girl released a contented belch and patted her distended belly with satisfaction.

"You'll have to redo your lipstick." The old man observed.

"Forget it." The blind girl replied wiping her mouth on a napkin. "I didn't like the feel of it anyway."

The twelve year old dancer stood up then and bowing to the old man told him,

"I should try to find my friends. Thank you for the meal and the company."

"My pleasure." Lee said standing and returning the bow, then, in a confidential tone, he advised her, "You should probably refrain from any obvious earthbending while in the Lion's camp. The Lioness of the Tribes does not look upon it kindly. It is seen as an unfair and unnatural advantage, and benders are seen as arrogant bullies and cheaters. Just a word to the wise."

"Thank you again." The bender bowed a second time.

The fat old man returned the bow and watched the small girl walk off to the circle of young people around the right hand bonfire. He silently prayed that all would turn out well.

* * *

Sokka looked to the night sky. He already knew that there would be no moon tonight. He always knew the cycles of the moon. But he looked anyway. He would have liked to have had the moon on his side for this fight. There would be a fight. He knew he could not surrender this time. This time he had no choice.

The Travelers around the fire pulled their legs in and sat up, some even standing. They knew there would be a fight tonight, a fight they would tell around future campfires, even though everyone had heard the story before or had witnessed it themselves. They would still tell the story and all would listen.

"Are you fighting for a kiss Gia?" A woman called out.

"For a lot more than a kiss this time." Gia laughed, spinning her knives so that they flashed in the fire light.

The young man unbuckled his weapons belt and carefully laid it down by his spot in the circle. He rose with two long dark objects in his hands as he walked back into the fire light. The tall woman thought he had two of the long knives of the Travelers at first, then she heard the sound of metal sliding across metal and the water tribesman stood before her holding a golden fan in each hand.

The teen bowed to the knife fighter then took a back stance, standing on his right leg, his left leg bent, his left foot ninety degrees to his right, the toe facing towards his opponent and the only part of the foot touching the ground was the toe. The fans were open shining in the firelight, his left hand reversed and the fan facing down and covering his stomach, his right up at his chest, the fan open and covering his face so that only his laughing blue eyes peered over the top.

To his opponent and all the other watchers he looked like a demure young woman hiding behind her elegant fans. This impression was only heightened by the quiet girlish laugh he released as he beckoned Gia on with his right hand fan.

* * *

Toph searched for Laura around the bonfire. There must have been over a hundred teens and young adults around the fire. The noise was mind numbing. Drums and instruments blaring, the only thing about it that could be called music was the steady rhythm of the largest drums, since only the heavy drums seemed to be playing the same song. People were talking, shouting really, and screaming, and cursing and some were even singing. The women where trilling their high pitched cries, and the men were cheering.

The young girl tried to use her bending to find her friend but it was almost useless, people were dancing everywhere and those who weren't actually dancing were jumping up and down or stomping their feet. Hundreds of feet striking the earth jumbled everything for the bender.

The blind girl walked around the perimeter of the crowd for a while searching, but did not find either of the girls she had come with.

"MISTY GREEN!" A boy shouted near her.

Toph turned towards the shout and felt a young man walk up to her.

"I'M TAMAS!" The boy screamed over the noise. "I MET YOU LAST NIGHT, I SAW YOU DANCE!"

Tamas voice sounded familiar. Then the young girl placed it, he was one of Laura's friends that had talked to her after the dance last night. She thought he was voice number two, or maybe he was number three she couldn't be sure.

"OH YEAH!" The bender shouted back. "HI!"

"LAURA TOLD ME TO LOOK OUT FOR YOU!" The teen explained. "SHE SAID YOU WERE HERE. SHE'S OVER AT THE WATERBENDING CONTEST."

The young man pointed off to the right where there was a large group which had spun off from the main group around the bonfire.

"I WENT TO GET MORE WINE!" He told her handing her a full wine skin.

"OH!" She said taking the skin. "THEY HAVE WATER BENDERS HERE?"

"OH NO!" Tamas said with a laugh. "THEY JUST CALL IT THAT! HAVE SOME WINE!"

Toph held up the bota bag and squirted a little wine into her mouth.

"IF THEY DON'T HAVE WATERBENDERS WHY DO THEY CALL IT A WATERBENDING CONTEST?" The blind girl asked handing the wine skin back.

"YOU'LL SEE! IT'S A LOT OF FUN, YOU MAY EVEN WANT TO ENTER!" The teen told her taking back the wine and then taking hold of her hand, he led her off to the contest.

* * *

Gia was confused. She had expected Dark Skin to use his sword, it seemed to be his favored weapon and with what she had seen this morning he was freightingly good with it. _But Fans?_

The knife fighter felt the adrenaline and alcohol flowing through her veins. Maybe she would cut him, just a little. Blood was always good for a little foreplay. She felt the warm nagging tickle down between her legs. _Yes, let's see how amusing this was with a little blood running down his arm._

"Well don't you look nice with those pretty fans!" Gia called out, moving into her stance.

The statement got a laugh from the crowd and she smiled, but she didn't hear Zoltan's barking laugh and when she flicked her eyes to the leader of Rolling Thunder she saw that he was standing with a fascinated look in his dark eyes. Z was seeing something she and the rest of the House Hold did not and it worried her.

Sokka fluttered his fans in an embarrassed and shy manner while giving a small high pitched giggle at the compliment. _I really should not have had that drink!_ He admonished himself. He was using the style of the Kyoshi fan combat, which was feminine in its core, but he was pushing it. He was being silly and the alcohol was feeding his silliness, but he wanted to piss Gia off. She was a fierce fighter and if he could get her angry enough, he should be able to trick her into over committing on one of her attacks and then he could spring his trap. _If she doesn't kill me first!_

* * *

"I don't understand." Toph told the group as they walked away from the contest into a quieter section of the camp ground. "That wasn't water bending. It was just a couple of guys squirting water on girls' chests from water skins, and a bunch of guys cheering about it."

Tamas had, after a lot of shoving and elbowing, led her to Laura, Drina, and the two other boys from last night in a crowd of cheering young men. They had stood around for a while "watching" the waterbending until a winner and runner ups were chosen and the crowd began to break up. Now the six of them were walking to another area of the camp ground.

"How come you didn't enter Laura?" Guaril (voice one Toph thought) asked the drummer.

"This is a new outfit." The girl answered. "Besides to win you have to have more than I've got."

"Quantity over quality." The teenage boy told her, while pulling her close. "And yours are definitely the best."

Toph still did not understand what all the cheering had been about. The guys squirting the water didn't even do it with any sort of style. They were just getting the girls wet, as far as she could tell.

"What about you Misty Green?" Yanko (who was voice two or three, Toph was not sure which) asked the young girl.

"What about me what?" The bender asked

"Why didn't you enter the contest." The teenager asked her.

"Because she has more brains than you do." Drina told the boy.

"She's not like that." Tamas added, running his arm around the blind girl's waist.

"Wine!" Laura called out.

"Here!" Tamas answered handing over the bota bag in his free hand.

The wine skin was passed around. Everyone taking a drink, Toph kept her squirts to a minimum, while Laura seemed to drink the most, swallowing entire mouthfuls each time the skin came to her.

"Well this is fun." Toph finally said after the third pass of the skin.

"We could go to the dancing ground. You could dance for us Misty Green." Tamas said slipping his other arm around her and pulling the young girl into a hug.

"Yeah ok." The bender said pushing away from the young man who eased off on the hug but kept his hands on her shoulders.

"No!" Drina said emphatically. "That's just a meat market, and the noise is deafening."

"Meat market?" Toph asked, brushing off the teen age boys hands.

"Just a bunch of girls shaking their butts for a bunch of drunks." The oldest of the three girls explained.

Tamas accepted the wine skin from Yanko, and after taking a swig passed it on to Toph who just moved it along to Laura who took a long pull from it.

"We could go to Marko's caravan." Guaril suggested in a low growl. "It will be quiet there."

The boy slid his hand down the drummer's side and began to rub her hip as he said this last.

"Yeah that'll be fun!" Laura said wiping some wine from her chin as she handed the skin to Guaril, who took a long one handed drink, his right hand tracing circles on the drummer's hip.

Guaril passed the skin on then wrapped his now free hand around the young drummer pulling her into a close hug, dipping his head down to kiss her neck, which was rewarded with a little squeal from the young girl.

"Yeah fun." The oldest of the boys said in a low growl while still nuzzling the teen girl's neck.

"Lots" Drina said, sounding a lot like Mai to Toph's ear.

Yanko handed the wine to the oldest of the girls, while placing a hand on her back. Drina took the skin and gave the teen a hard look which caused him to pull his hand away as if he had just touched a boarcupine.

_Fun! Fun! Fun!_ Toph thought, as she shied away from another attempt from Tamas to pull her into a hug. _Let's go to a caravan where I won't be able to use my bending. Yeah that sounds like a great idea. _She wondered what Meathead was doing right now. She bet that Idiot was having the time of his life.

* * *

Gia charged knives slashing. Sokka made a spinning leap to the side, jumping over the fire, while sweeping his fans in a great circle through the flames.

The knife fighter swung her right hand to her right, while twisting her upper body towards the fire, trying to get a strike in before Dark Skin was out of range, as she ran past. She had know the young man was fast, and especially starting from the stance he was in, he could retreat faster than she could normally advance, so she had resorted to running full out at him. But instead of retreating the tribesman had leapt away, right over the fire.

Gia's knife swept uselessly through the air as her face was hit with a cloud of smoke and flame from the fire, blown into her eyes by Deep Blue's fans. The tall woman was momentarily blinded by tears and she was so thrown off she nearly tripped before being able to stop herself. When she finally got her eyes clear and her feet solidly under her again she looked across the flames to see Dark Skin on the opposite side of the fire in that same simpering stance, his amused blue eyes peering over his fan, as he gave a soft, high pitched, embarrassed giggle.

"Excellent." Zoltan said in a quiet admiring tone.

The dark eyed man watched as Gia rocked back on her legs then ran forward jumping over the fire. Dark Skin took a long step and leapt towards her. Her knives skidded harmlessly off of his fans as the two fighters crossed in the air over the flames. Both landed and turned to face each other again, the fire between them. The young man had an exaggerated look of shock and surprise on his face, which would have gotten a bark of laughter from Zoltan if it was not matched by a ferocious look of desire and hate by the tall woman.

The leader could see that the young man had been successful. The best fighter in the House Hold was off. She was wild tonight, which weakened her, but also made her very dangerous.

Gia watched Dark Skin as he resumed that insipid stance of his. He was good but she would take him down and have him if it was the last thing she did this night.

The tall woman rocked back and ran again, jumping over the fire with her arms swinging in a slashing attack. Sokka took his long step, but instead of jumping he dropped down under the attack. He dug his fans into the ash in the fire pit and threw it up into the path of the woman as she flew through the air. Blinded by the cloud of cinders Gia could not see the young man spring up just as she was landing, turning his shoulder into her and striking her in the center of her chest with the point of his right shoulder.

The knife fighter felt like she had just jumped full speed onto a boulder. There was no give as she landed and the wind was knocked out of her, her feet failed and she would have fallen back into the fire if Sokka had not reached out with three fingers, the other two still holding the fan, down between her breasts and grabbed the scarf holding her surcoat on. The young man pulled the woman from the flames then with his closed fans struck the thumbs on both her hands. The knives fell from her numb grip as the woman, still blinded, staggered back.

Sokka kicked the knives off to the side and resumed his back stance, raising an eyebrow as he hid his smile behind his fan.

Gia nearly fell as she tried to regain her breath. Her hands tingled from the strikes from the metal fans. She got some air into her lungs and dug the ash out of her eyes. When she could see again she saw Dark Skin standing and waiting for her in the demure stance again.

"Son of a bitch!" The tall woman cried out as she reached under her surcoat and brought out two fresh knives.

Deep Blue gave her an exaggerated shocked expression, while closing his fans and shaking one at her, looking for all the world like a mature matron admonishing a bad little girl. This performance got a little laugh from the group watching the fight. Then the young man resumed his shy young maiden stance, hiding behind his fans.

"Son of a bitch." Gia said, in a low quiet voice this time, flicking the blades open on her knives.

_You've got to calm down!_ The woman told herself. _He's controlling this fight._ _He's got you jumping to his tune. You've got get it under control!_ She knew this but it was so difficult. He was clever and was reading her so well. And it was not just the fight she had to get under control. The warm tickle had now become a hot itch between her legs that needed rubbing.

The knife fighter began a slow advance on the water tribesman, but she soon saw that it was useless. Every time she took a step forward he retreated a step. No matter how fast or how slow she moved he matched her every time. At one point she had thought of trying to jump over the fire again to get at him, but she saw the smile in his eyes, and he waved her on with one of his fans. No! The only way to close with him was to charge him at full speed.

"Son of a bitch." The woman said under breath.

"Excellent." Zoltan breathed as he watched the two fighters circle the fire.

"I thought he said he couldn't dance." Mirela whispered watching the young man and the woman.

"He lied." The dark eyed man whispered back.

Gia charged, knives straight out in front of her. Instead of retreating Dark Skin advanced into the charge side stepping to his left. Ducking under the tall woman's slashing attack he slipped his right hand fan under the front flap of her surcoat and flipped it up over her head, while he used his left hand to do the same with the back portion of the overdress.

The knife fighter was blinded again, this time by her own clothing. She felt the strikes of the closed fans on her wrists and the knives fell from her numb fingers.

"FUCK!" She screamed pulling her surcoat off of her face.

When Gia was finally able to see again she saw the water tribesman standing there a short distance away. Giving her his shocked matron look, wagging his closed fan at her. _He's not even breathing hard!_ She told herself. She began to pull at the knot holding her surcoat on, once free she tore the overdress off and threw it aside. The shocked matron turned her face away and used his fan to hid the sight of the knife fighter dressed in just her short open blouse and her light pants.

The tall woman stooped down and drew her knives from her boots. These were her last pair. She was going to stick him with them. Oh, she wouldn't do too much damage, but she was going to stick him, then she was going to drag him off to her caravan and have him. _Just look at him!_ Bare to the waist. His strong lean muscles moving under his dark brown skin. Even in his simpering stance he couldn't hid his strength and beauty. And those laughing deep blue eyes, hidden behind his stupid fan.

No! She wouldn't drag him off. She would defeat him and have him right here! She would fuck him in front of the entire House Hold. She felt a drop of liquid start the long roll down the inside of her thigh as she flicked the blades out on her knives.

Sokka had seen it in her eyes as she pulled her last set of knives. Zoltan had told him how many she carried the other night, so he knew these were her last. He knew she would come for him now, she would hold nothing back. This would be his chance, or it could be his life. Either way this would decide the fight. He hid his eyes behind the fan appearing to blind himself, but by looking through the tines at the base of the fan he could still see her feet. He had been taught that foot work tells the story. He was about to find out if Piandao had been right.

Gia charged screaming and slashing wildly as she came in, then something flashed before her eyes blinding her one last time. Then something had her right arm, pulling and twisting it as the fan Sokka had thrown struck her face.

Dark Skin let her charge in, then throwing his fans spinning in the air at her face, he side stepped to his left outside of her arm, striking her wrist with the edge of his right hand then, closing his fingers, he grabbed her wrist while his left grabbed her elbow pushing and twisting her arm.

The charge could not be stopped and the knife fighter was swung around on her arm as if it were a rope tied to a tree. Gia's body was bent over, her feet falling behind, she was forced down skidding along the ground as her arm was twisted up behind her back and locked into place. She was helpless. She tried to struggle but every time she moved her arm was raised higher and twisted a little more, sending waves a pain from her shoulder throughout her body. She cried out in pain.

"Let go of the knife." Deep Blue quietly told her. "You're just hurting yourself."

Gia tried to resist, she tried to kick, or do something but she was under his complete control. Any resistance was met with brutal pain. It felt like her shoulder was being ripped apart.

"Let go of the knife." The young man told her.

This was Dark Skin's voice in her ear. He was no longer playing the role of the shy maiden, or the offended matron, he was not even being the nice young man who liked to fight for fun. This was Dark Skin telling her what to do. Dark Skin the fighter. Dark Skin the killer. Dark Skin who would do whatever it took. Dark Skin who found it easy to kill but didn't because everything that came after was too much trouble.

Gia released the knife and let it be taken from her hand. Sokka tossed the knife off to the side.

"Now the other one." Dark Skin told her. "Toss it away."

A little more twist, a little more lift. Pain shot through her. Gia tossed the knife away.

"Good." Dark Skin, quietly, almost in a whisper, told her. "Now if you surrender strike the ground once, palm down, with your free hand, otherwise I will destroy your shoulder and believe me it will never be the same again."

The tall slim Traveler held out as long as she could but there was nothing she could do. She had no choice. She surrendered to the warrior, striking the ground once.

* * *

Toph was pulled up the stairs and into the caravan. She reached out with her free hand, Tamas was holding on to her left hand pulling her along, and found a set of bunk beds. There were a lot of arms and legs hanging over the edge of the top bunk. Her foot hit a leg on the floor.

"Sorry." The bender said.

"Yeah it's really dark in here, watch your step." Tamas told her pulling her along. There's a spot over here."

The blind girl felt along the lower bunk as she was pulled gently into the caravan. Her hand hit a girl's thigh, and she felt a hand cover her own pull it up higher on the leg, accompanied by a giggle from the legs owner.

"Join us." The stranger said with another giggle.

"Yeah thanks but I'm with what's his name." Toph replied pulling her hand free.

The caravan was apparently full of people, since the blind girl kept stepping on bodies as she moved farther in. The air was hot, stuffy and full of incense which made her dizzy. Finally Tamas stopped and putting his hands on her waist told her,

"Here's a spot. Go ahead, sit down."

Toph lowered herself, pulling the back flap of her surcoat under her. There was no chair and she landed with something of a thump on the thickly carpeted floor. There was someone on her left or some ones really who were writhing quietly on the floor. She felt Tamas sit down on her right. She leaned up against the wall of the cart then felt the young man lay his arm across her shoulders.

The sounds in the small space were all the small bender had to go by and she really wasn't sure what was going on. There were quite a few giggles from young women. Some sighs and groans from young men. A little moaning coming from the opposite corner and a lot of what sounded like licking or maybe it was kissing, that could be it.

Toph thought she heard Laura's laugh nearby and asked,

"Laura?"

"Hey Misty." The drummer laughed. "Great isn't it. Here have some of this. It's from Marko's private stock."

The blind girl felt a small bottle pressed into her hand.

"Marko's is the best." Tamas told her. "They say he gets it direct from the sand tribes."

"No…, thanks…, I'm fine." The young girl said holding out the flask for someone to take from her.

"You're better than anything that Marko has." Guaril said.

Toph heard some more of the kissing licking sound after that and a lot of giggles and sighs from where Laura's voice had come from.

The twelve year old felt the bottle taken from her, and then Tamas' arm on her shoulder pulled her close to him. His other hand slipped under the front flap of her surcoat and she felt it travel across her stomach, which made her skin jump.

"You smell so good." The boy told her nuzzling his face into her neck.

"A… Thanks." The bender answered.

"Oooo… What's this?" Tamas asked as Toph felt a tug on her stomach piercing.

"It's jewelry, it's new, don't touch it." She replied.

The hand let go of the chain but continued to move across her stomach. The other hand, that had been on her shoulder, began to move down her arm.

"So beautiful." Tamas said, nuzzling farther into the girl's neck.

Toph felt something wet move across her neck under her ear. _Is he licking me?_ She scrunched her head down to cover the area under the _The Attack of the Tongue Monster!_ The young bender was also surprised by the number of hands the teenage boy seemed to have. She could have sworn he only had the regulation two, but they seemed to be either multiplying, or else they were very busy since they seemed to be all around her, and moving continuously, occasionally to rather sensitive areas of her anatomy.

Unable to earth bend the blind girl resorted to more direct means of communication and elbowed the young man in the ribs. She really had to ask Meathead to teach her some non-bender close quarters combat techniques.

"What?" Tamas asked, surprise and hurt, not to mention a lack of air, evident in his voice.

Toph wasn't sure what to say. It was not that she didn't like the boy, she didn't even know him. She just didn't like strange people touching and licking her. She liked it when Meathead touched her, but he wasn't strange, well he was strange but he wasn't a stranger, well he was stranger than anyone else she knew, but he had never licked her. _I wonder what that would feel like? I bet Boomerang Boy would be a good licker. It would be the sort of thing he would be good at. Maybe I could ask him to lick me sometime._

"Did I do something?" The teen Traveler asked, pulling the young girl out of her reverie, she really should not have drunk that wine.

"No! It's just that…" The blind girl told him.

She didn't want to offend the poor guy, but she had to tell him something. She wished Sokka were here. He was good at Orse Shitting people. _If Meathead were here he could lick me. _

"I have a boyfriend." The young girl lied.

It wasn't a big lie. _He is a boy and he is my friend, who would be really good at touching and licking._

"Oh yeah. Right." Tamas said, loosening his grip on the girl. "And he likes killing people."

"He doesn't like it really, he just does it when he has to." The bender explained.

"Oh." The boy said letting go of her completely.

The two young people sat next to each other for a time, listening to all the sighing, moaning, licking, kissing around them.

"These are new." Guaril's voice came out of the dark.

"Yes I just got them today." Laura's breathless voice answered.

"Tasty." Guaril said. "MMMmmmmm."

"Ohhhhh yessss." Laura replied.

"I think I'm going to get some air." Toph told Tamas, trying to stand up.

"Good idea." The young man replied helping her.

Getting out of the caravan was even worse than getting in. There were body parts all over the floor that the blind girl kept stepping on and more along the walls and bunks that her hands kept making contact with as she worked her way to the door.

Toph gave a truly genuine sigh of relief as her feet finally hit the ground outside. She sent out her bending and felt the world again.

"Well hello pretty girl." A new male voice said, as the bender felt an arm circle her waist.

"Boldo! What are you doing here?" Tamas asked from the doorway of the caravan.

* * *

Gia slowly stood massaging her shoulder. Dark Skin had released her as soon as she had surrendered to him.

"Hurts, doesn't it." The young man said indicating her shoulder. "I know from experience."

"It's fine." The tall woman said.

"Excellent." Zoltan said walking up to the water tribesman.

"And you said you don't dance." Mirela added.

Others of the House Hold approached the young man, all talking and congratulating him on his victory. The knife fighter turned to walk away. She really didn't want to be told what a good job she had done at being beaten. She was surprised that the fire within her had not cooled. Her defeat had only stoked the flames higher. She was burning now. Her whole body becoming one white hot flame.

The tall woman turned and began to walk away from the fire but was stopped as someone approached her.

"Gia." Bela called.

The young Traveler walked up to the slim woman, her surcoat over his arms, her knives in his hands, a pleading look in his eyes. The fighter refused his offerings with a shake of her head and walked off to her caravan, rubbing her shoulder. Defeated the young man returned to his place by the fire.

Sokka watched as the tall woman walked away from the camp fire into the shadows of the carts.

"With fans no less. I can't believe it." A male voice pulled his attention back to the group around him.

The man who had spoken, the tribesman didn't know his name, handed the fans, that had been discarded in the fight, to the young man.

"They're war fans." The boy explained accepting them with a small bow. "They're from Kyoshi Island and there they have an entire fighting style based on them."

"I can believe it." The older man said patting the younger man's bare shoulder. "Amazing job, especially against Gia. She's one of the best we have.'

"Thank you" Deep Blue said bowing again.

Sokka was embarrassed by all the congratulations. He felt he had not fought well. The liquor had made him arrogant and silly. It was not something he was proud of.

Eventually the crowd around the young man broke up and the Travelers returned to their places by the fire, many of them discussing what they had just seen with the people who had just seen it themselves, which only made the discussions more lively. Finally a drum was struck and instruments were brought out and tuned.

"Is she alright, do you think?" The water tribesman asked turning to the leader of the House hold and indicating the slim female fighter who had left the campfire.

"I don't know." Zoltan answered. "She's not used to losing, and especially not the way she lost tonight."

"Yeah sorry about that." The young man told him, embarrassed by his actions. "Maybe I should talk to her. Apologize for being a dick."

"What?" The Traveler asked confused by the warrior's response.

"If there's one thing I know about it is losing." The teen said, laying down his fans with his other weapons and walking off after his defeated foe.

"Tell her she owes me a shirt." The leader of the House Hold called after the tribesman.

"Where's he going?" Mirela asked.

"He's going to apologize for being a better fighter than Gia." Zoltan answered, sitting down next to his girl friend.

"Really?" The dancer asked surprised.

"Must be a water tribe thing." The dark eyed man answered.

* * *

"I'm talking to a pretty girl!" Boldo answered pulling Toph up against him.

Unthinking the blind girl punched the big guy hard in the stomach. Pushing herself away, she moved into a bending stance to bury the creep, when she felt Tamas grab her around the waist and pull her off the ground and swing her around behind him.

"Yeah well it doesn't look like she's very interested in talking to you." Tamas said turning to the ex-halberdier.

"She hasn't gotten to know me yet." Boldo said advancing on the teen and pushing him to the side and grabbing Toph's arm pulling her to his side, and coincidentally out of another bending stance.

The blind girl punched the big guy in the stomach again, then stomped her heel down on his booted foot. Boldo was, luckily for the small girl, wearing his soft dress boots not his heavy fighting boots, and the young girl's hard heel caused a considerable amount of pain to shoot through the man's foot.

Toph wrenched her arm free but before she could do anything else, her other arm was grabbed and she was yanked off her feet again, and pulled behind Tamas.

"She seems to know you well enough already." The teen Traveler said with a laugh.

Before the young girl could bend the two fools into the river, she felt two hands gently but firmly land on her shoulders.

"You better get out of this." Drina said pulling the blind girl away from the two young men.

The blind girl suddenly thought. _Are they fighting over me?_ Laura had promised that lots of boys would fight over her, and this was only two, but two was better than none. _All right, now we're getting somewhere. Now all we have to do is get to the good part and start with the foot kissing. Of course Boomerang Boy isn't here to see it. Am I going to have to drag these two jerks all the way back to the camp ground just so Meathead can see them kissing my foot?_ The young girl sighed. _This whole being a pretty girl thing was turning into a lot of work._ She wasn't sure it was worth it.

"You're not in the guard anymore, so you're fair game now asshole." Tamas told the larger man.

"I don't need the guard to kick your sorry ass." The ex-guardsman replied leaning towards the younger man.

"Yeah I saw how good you were on your own this morning." The teen Traveler answered back.

"That was… He caught me off guard." Boldo shot back.

"I thought it was Aishe that caught you off guard." Tamas threw back.

"Shithead!" Was the brilliant response of the ex-halberdier.

"At least I'm smart enough not to pick fights with the Black Lotus!" The smaller man replied.

"That asshole wasn't the Black Lotus." The older of the two declared.

"No? Then what's that on your forehead?" The younger asked.

"It's not black stupid." The larger explained forcefully.

"That's because you're not a bender, if you had been the Lioness would be spending your Were Geld." Tamas explained with a smug smile.

"Oh… Fuck you!" Boldo said shoving the teen.

"Fuck you!" The teen replied shoving back.

"Asshole!" Boldo shoved again.

"Dick wad!" Tamas returned the shove.

"Fuck Face!" Shoved Boldo

"Ass rag!" Shoved Tamas.

Invectives continued to fly between the two as the young men began to push and shove each other beside the caravan. Toph found it all rather boring. After a promising start the two young men were just rolling around on the ground yelling at each other. The two of them were not very good fighters.

* * *

Gia didn't understand. She was lying on her bed in her caravan and nothing was working, the fire inside her was still there. The need overwhelming her. Then she heard the knock on her door. Growling she wiped her hands on the sheet, pulled up her pants, retying the draw string and got up.

"What?" The woman cried out as she opened the door, expecting to see Bela standing there.

Instead it was Dark Skin, still naked from the waist up, his skin even darker in the pale green light of the glow crystal lantern hanging over her door. His dark blue eyes almost black in the green light.

"Sorry." Sokka said stepping back. "I just wanted to check and see if you were ok."

"Fine." The woman said stepping down out of the door way, silhouetted now by the lantern.

The fifteen year old looked up and saw the tall slim woman, the light shining through her light blouse and pants. Her stiff nipples evident, casting a small shadow on the cloth of her shirt as she turned profile to the light.

"Do you want to come in?" She asked motioning for him to climb up the short ladder.

"No… No! I don't want to bother you." The teen said dropping his eyes to the ground. "I just wanted to see if your shoulder was ok."

"Still hurts a little." The attractive woman said, rubbing it.

Gia jumped down from the caravan. She had kicked off her boots and socks when she had first entered the caravan, so barefoot now she had to look up just a little to meet his eyes, as she landed by the young man, her hand still on her shoulder.

"Turn around." The boy requested. "I know something about strained muscles."

The attractive fighter turned and walked the few steps around to the side of the cart facing away from the camp fire. The shadows were deep here, the only light from a few scattered glow crystal lanterns on other caravans and the stars in the moonless evening sky.

As the woman stopped she heard the boy follow then, her back to him, felt his large strong hands rest gently on her shoulder. The long fingers began to rub and massage her injuries. Warmth spread from his hands into her shoulder then down across her back and chest. He really was good at this, it felt warm and wonderful.

Gia reached up and undid the one button holding her blouse together. She slipped the thin cloth down off of her shoulders but held it closed across her chest.

"That feels much better. You've done this before." The woman told the young man behind her.

"I've had my share of pulls and strains. Just be happy you didn't have a broken nose to go with it." Deep Blue told her as he continued the massage.

The young woman rolled her head from side to side. The young man moved his hands and began to work the muscles of her neck and both shoulders. _It's so easy._ The woman told herself with a smile. She let out a small moan of pleasure as she let her hands drop to her sides the blouse slipping off onto the ground.

"That feels wonderful." The knife fighter told the boy.

"Good." He replied expanding the area he was working on, to include her upper back.

The massage did feel wonderful, and Gia leaned back into it. The boy's strong hands warmed her and she could feel the fire within her grow as his heat moved down through her. She had to force herself to keep her hands at her sides.

"I just wanted to apologize for being such a jerk back there." The young man told her, as he continued working her neck shoulders and back.

"You're apologizing for winning?" The woman asked.

"Not for winning but more how I won." The fifteen year old tried to explain. "I really pushed the more obnoxious forms of that style of fighting to try and piss you off."

"It worked." She told him with a deep chuckle.

"Yeah, sorry about that." The boy apologized.

"Winning is winning." The young woman said, luxuriating in the back rub.

"Not always." The teen replied.

Sokka finished the back rub with a long back scratch with both hands. The attractive woman rounded her back into the scratching loving the hot thrill it sent through her. When he was finished the black eyed woman turned and faced the boy.

"Thanks, that's much better." The woman told him reaching for his right hand.

_HOLY FUCKING SHIT!_ A voice in the young man's head screamed. _TITS!_ Sokka desperately pulled his eyes up and looked over the top of the tall woman's head. _HOLY FUCKING SHIT!_ The voice in his head kept screaming. _Calm down!_ He told himself. _She just forgot or something. It's probably part of her whole one of the guys thing like in the wash tent; she probably doesn't even realize what she's doing._ But it did no good the other part of his brain was still screaming _TITS! Man! TITS! Right there in front of you!_ It took all the teens will power to keep his eyes up.

The water tribesman felt cool fingers on his right hand, and then felt them draw his hand up. Gia smiled. _It was all so easy._ She told herself.

Sokka carefully lowered his eyes to the face of the young woman standing in front of him. _TITS!_ His mind screamed but he was able to keep his eyes locked on the black feral eyes of the knife fighter as she drew his hand to her face and kissed his palm.

"Maybe I could do something for you." She told him, lowering his hand down onto her chest.

_HOLY FUCKING HOG MONKEY BAT SHIT! _

"Ahhhh…." The boy said desperately.

Gia closed his hand onto her breast as she leaned her body into the pressure.

"You still have to collect your prize for winning the fight." The woman told him, reaching for his other hand.

_TUI FUCKING LA! SHE WANTS TO HAVE SEX!_ Sokka thought, but then his reason kicked in. _No! That's impossible. No one wants to have sex with me. Not even Suki and she's my girlfriend, or was my girlfriend. I'm still not sure what's going on there, with Suki that is._

The tribesman's train of thought was derailed when he felt his left hand land on something soft and warm and wonderful on the very attractive young woman's chest.

"Ahhhh…." The fifteen year old said.

Gia smiled as she pressed both of the teen's hands onto her breasts. _All so very easy!_ She told herself. Her only surprise was her own reaction. She leaned into his hands, rubbing them harshly on her chest, letting the pain and the pleasure join in her chest to become a wonderful burning sensation that ran down into her groin.

"Gia… I… Ahhh… You… Ahh…" The boy said trying to back away from the young woman.

The Traveler released her grip on the boy's hands and placed her own onto his waist, as she moved forward, keeping pace with his backward steps. She loved the feel of his skin, his beautiful dark skin. She ran her hands up onto his chest while hissing out her pleasure at touching him.

The fifteen year old finally realized that his hands were free, and that he no longer was being forced to press them against the wonderful soft flesh of the lovely woman's breasts. With an amazing act of will he moved them up onto her shoulders. _YOU IDIOT! She wants you to touch her._

"Gia… I can't…" He tried to explain.

The knife fighter pushed him up against the side of the caravan and moving her hands from his chest grabbed onto his face.

"Can't what?" The woman asked moving her face towards his. "Fuck me. Why not?"

"I… Ahhh… I've got a girlfriend." The teen told her.

_NO YOU DON'T!_ The voice screamed in his head. _She left you remember._

"Well she's not here." The woman told him. "And I am."

Gia tried to close the distance between them, but Sokka was able to keep her back pushing on her shoulders. _Tui she's strong!_ The young man thought. _Yeah and she wants to FUCK YOU! Let her._

The young woman looked at the boy in confusion. She had never had any man resist this much.

"I'm not asking you to marry me." She told him. "I just want you to fuck me. What's the problem? It's just sex."

"There has to be more." The boy told her, a little desperation entering his voice. "Or else what's the point?"

"The point is you've got a dick, and I've got a pussy what more is there?" She told him, releasing his face and running her right hand down between their bodies grabbing him through his pants.

"That's the point." She growled as she felt him grow and stiffen in her hand.

Gia loved the feeling of having a man in her hand. There was nothing the boy could do. His body was responding to her not to him. She was the one who ruled here.

"I'll ride you like a wild dragon in heat!" She told him, crushing her bare breasts against his naked chest, her hips trapping her hand between them as she stroked up and down his stiffness.

The teen let out a low strangled moan, trying to push the woman back.

"I'll fuck you soft and suck you hard all night long." She told him in a low quiet voice, her mouth nuzzling his neck, her hand stroking and squeezing him.

"I'll let you do whatever you want." She whispered. "You can cum in my cunt, my mouth, on my face. Whatever you want! When you're an old man sitting there with your fat wife and your grandkids it will be me that you will remember. It will be this night that you will never forget."

Squaring his shoulder against the wall of the cart Sokka was finally able to push the knife fighter off of and away from him.

"No!" The boy told her in a strangled panting voice. "That's not enough! There has to be more!"

"What more do you want?" The woman demanded. "There's your cock and my pussy! What else is there?"

"Love would be nice." The fifteen year old replied.

"Fine!" The slim woman declared. "I love you, let's fuck!"

Gia moved to him again but he pushed her back.

"But I don't love you." He told her, anger beginning to enter his voice. "Without that there is only sex and you don't need me for that. You don't need anyone for that."

Sokka could see that he had struck home with this last. The hurt was clear in the young woman's eyes. She lashed out with her right hand trying to land a punch to his face but he was able to throw up a rising hammer block that struck her arm away.

The pain of the block shot through Gia's forearm. It moved into her chest and joined the hurt and desire roiling there. Her eyes burned.

"It's that stupid brat isn't it?" The knife fighter demanded. "She's the one you love!"

"That's sick!" The tribesman shot back. "She's just a kid. I'd never touch her, not like that."

"A kid, yeah right!" The woman said, rubbing her arm. "I saw her dance for you! She's as much of a kid as I am. In a lot of places she would be married by now with a baby in her belly. She probably already has your kid inside her."

"You're crazy!" The boy cried, anger, and guilt fighting for dominance in his voice.

"Crazy? Crazy?" The tall woman asked sarcastically while walking up to the teen. "I heard you two last night. Everyone in the camp heard and felt you two going at it."

"That's insane!" He said in a low dangerous voice. "I would never do that. I was only helping her with her bending."

"Bending! Right!" Gia said, moving so that her face was even with his. "There's only one reason a girl cries out like that."

The tribesman turned his face away at the accusation, but the knife fighter grabbed his face with her right hand and pulled him back to look into her eyes.

"Sokkkk…aaaa!" The woman moaned out, making it sound foul and obscene.

Dark Skin's left arm swept up and around the fighter's right locking the elbow and lifting her up onto her toes. His right hand was on her throat before she could even blink. She was swung through the air, the back of her head smashing against the side of the caravan. White hot sparks of light danced in her vision from the impact. She tried to cry out in surprise and pain but no sound could escape the strong hand on her throat.

"Shut up!" Dark Skin growled into her face, baring his white teeth in a vicious snarl. "I would never do that to her! I would never touch her like that! I would never hurt her!"

Gia was helpless. All she could see were the dark eyes of the warrior, almost black in the dim green light of the glow crystals. She couldn't move, pinned against the caravan. She couldn't fight, her arm nearly twisted out of her shoulder. She couldn't make a sound. All she saw in the dark eyes was pain and death. She surrendered to it. Her vision closed down, the shadows at the edges growing and darkening until all that was left were those dark, dark eyes.

The tall Traveler, the Psycho Bitch of Rolling Thunder surrendered to Dark Skin. She surrendered her body, her mind, her soul to him. She had no choice. And with surrender came release. Her body no longer under her control burned with a bright incandescent light. The flame coursed through her, consumed her, and left her with nothing. Her knees buckled, but that made no difference, Dark Skin held her up. Her body responded to him and him alone.

A moan escaped Gia's lips as her body slumped to the ground. Deep Blue had released her. Spasm after spasm shot through her body as she tried to curl up into a ball on the ground. Finally her body quieted and came back to her. She could hear her name being called, she opened her eyes and saw the young man leaning down over her, guilt and concern flooding his face.

"Gia? Gia?" The boy asked squeezing her arm. "Are you alright?"

The question got a hoarse quiet laugh from the knife fighter in reply.

"Yeah, I'm ok." She told the teen. "Help me up."

The young man lifted her up into a sitting position.

"Thanks." She told him.

"Are you sure you're ok?" The tribesman asked again.

"Dark Skin…" The dark eyed woman told him with that hoarse laugh. "This is the most ok I have ever been in my life."

Gia looked up into the boy's face and patted his cheek in a vague tired manner.

"I'm so sorry." The teen apologized. "I totally lost it. I'm so sorry."

"I'm the one who should apologize." The woman told him. "I was trying to piss you off and I succeeded. Obviously I'm better at pissing people off than you are, and got what I asked for."

The tall woman found this last to be very funny, and laughed until a shudder ran through her body.

"Sorry." The tribesman told her again.

"Oma! Someone really did a job on you." The woman observed, looking up into the young man's face. "Probably a girl."

"What?" The teen asked.

"Forget it! Just help me to my feet. I really have to change my pants." The fighter asked holding out her hand.

Sokka hoisted Gia up onto her feet, where she leaned for a moment against the caravan, then holding onto the young man, walked to the steps leading up to the door. She paused then and turning to the teen told him,

"Don't beat yourself up over any of this. You're a good man, and I pushed you too far."

"Good man!" The boy said with a snort of derision. "I went crazy and almost killed you."

"Because I pushed you too far." She told him. "I'm the crazy bitch who thinks with her crotch. I should have known that you loved her."

"I don't…" The tribesman started but was stopped by a finger on his lips.

"Forget I said that." She told him, then leaning in she kissed him on the cheek. "You're a sweet kid. Now grab my ass and shove me up these steps, I don't think I can make it on my own."

"You've got a great ass." The teen said with a smile, pushing her up the stairs.

"Shit!" The woman said opening the door. "I said you were an ass man, so what do I do, I shove my tits at you. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Not that it would have made any difference."

At the mention of tits the young man had held up his hand and darted around the corner of the caravan. He returned a moment later holding the knife fighters blouse out to her.

"Thanks." She said accepting the top from him.

"Oh, Zoltan said to tell you that you owe him a shirt." The teen said.

"Well he'll just have to wait for that." Gia said going into the caravan and closing the door.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

x

Hi All,

I have to thank Kawayui-Kage over on Deviant Art, also known as Kagey here for the Jade brings good fortune and protection when given by someone who loves you. I didn't know that but she mentioned it in a review and let me use it in the story.

She is also doing fanart for the story that is gorgeous you should check it out over on Deviant Art. I am really honored.

x

The chapter, yeah… Well sorry it took so long to get it up. It was a tough one for me. It is also huge and I still haven't gotten them out of the camp yet. I will have to face the wrath of Tui and La. This chapter by itself is longer than most of my other stories. I hope it reads ok and isn't too long.

I hope the Sokka/Gia fight works for everyone. It is rather technical and descriptive.

I really hope the post fight Sokka Gia scene works. That was the one I had the most trouble with.

I really have to thank everyone for all the wonderful reviews on the last chapter. That was a real boost for me to know that it worked.

x

I always try to respond to all reviews if I can. If I missed anyone please forgive me.

x

To Sange; Be careful what you wish for :) I feel like I got pretty close to a billion words on this chapter.

To Nerfornothing; Sorry it took so long for this chapter. I hope you enjoy it.

To Anonymous Werrewolf; Sorry I try to make the next chapters shorter and get them out faster. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing.

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	40. Chapter 40

I'll Walk You Home pt 40

Chapter 13

pt. 2

The Blind Leading the Lost

* * *

Toph was leading Laura back to the camp. The young drummer was unsteady on her feet and needed help to find her way.

"The blind leading the befuddled." Drina had remarked as they had left the Lions camp.

Truth be told the young girl was glad to be going back to the camp and, though she refused to admit it, even to herself, back to Meathead. Oh, the party had been ok, well at least the food had been good, and she had enjoyed talking to the old man.

The fight had been the high point with lots of shouting and cursing, (she would have to ask Sokka what some of the words meant). A crowd had gathered and even Laura and Guaril had come out of the caravan to join the group watching the two young men fight.

"What's up?" a male voice behind Toph had asked as the fight progressed.

"Boldo and Tamas are fighting over a dancer from Rolling Thunder." A second male voice answered.

"Mirela?" The first voice asked incredulously.

"No, no." The second voice had replied. "It's a new girl, but just as beautiful from what I've heard."

"Oh" First had said. "Well let's hope they knock each other out and leave the dancer free for us."

Toph had liked the sound of that, well not the last part, but the part where she was compared to Mirela didn't sound so bad.

All in all having boys fight over her had been alright, but she had quickly determined that she would much rather fight for herself, it was just more fun.

"THE CAMP GUARD!" Someone in the crowd had shouted at that point, and everyone started running.

Drina had grabbed the bender, and the drummer, while Guaril and Yanko had grabbed Tamas and the six had run off into the night. Being chased was pretty good, but she preferred being chased with Sokka. He was more creative at dodging, and often asked her to jump up onto his back, which she enjoyed.

Soon enough the three couples found themselves at the main entrance to the Lions camp. Drina and Yanko just stood not looking at each other. Laura slung her drum and a new wineskin (Toph wasn't sure where the girl had gotten this one from) around onto her back and commenced to try to climb onto Guaril. Tamas took the blind girl's hands in his own and stood before her.

"Sorry about the jerk." The young man had told her.

"No problem." Toph had replied.

"I had fun." Tamas told her, squeezing her hands.

"Yeah, me too." The bender agreed.

The young Traveler seemed to be nervous about something, Toph could feel it in his hands, which were sweating, and the way he shifted on his feet. A little of his anxiety was passed over to her as she stood there not knowing what to do.

"So… Good night." The blind girl said.

"Yeah…" The boy replied.

"Oh to hell with it." Drina said.

The young Earthkingdom girl and the Traveler both turned to see (feel) the eighteen year old woman grab the head of the young man before her and crash her lips into his. Yanko was surprised at first, but then wrapped his arms around Drina and pulled her into a tight hug, while the two shared a long noisy kiss. Then as quickly as it had happened the two broke apart.

"See you next fair." Drina said while stepping back.

"A… Yeah, for sure." Yanko said in a dazed voice.

"See you next fair." Guaril told Laura as they finally broke from their own incredibly long and very noisy kiss.

"Count on it." The teen drummer replied laughing.

Laura blew the young man a kiss. Guaril mimed catching it then he mimed shoving the kiss into his mouth with both hands, while making "Nom Nom" sounds. This earned him a second laugh from the drummer.

Tamas turned to the young bender, and bowing, while raising her hands to his lips kissed each in turn before lowering them. Toph felt a small thrill run through her at the contact.

"See you next fair." The young man told her dropping her hands.

"Ah… Yeah." The blind girl had responded, then she turned and followed Drina and Laura out of the camp.

"Why do boys have to be such jerks." Drina said as the three of them walked along, pulling Toph out of her thoughts. "And more importantly, why does it feel so good when they kiss you."

"Yeah!" Laura said happily. "I love kissing boys."

"If you ever find a good one Misty grab onto him and never let him go." The eldest of the three told the youngest.

"Oh she has." The drummer said with a loud laugh. "Her boyfriend is gorgeous and so nice. He gave me this."

Laura held out the silver pendant as she stumbled along.

"If he wasn't taken I'd grab him up." The teen added. "You better be careful, Misty. If you don't want someone to snatch him up. Someone like meeeeee."

With this last the teen began to spin round as she walked.

"Don't even joke about that." Drina told the younger teen. "There's nothing worse than a bitch who steals another girl's boyfriend."

Toph felt the blood rush to her face as she heard this last. Her right hand, which had been stroking the jade pendant dropped to her side. Sokka wasn't her boyfriend. Sokka was Suki's boyfriend.

"It's hard not too when all the good ones are taken." The drummer replied.

"That's no excuse." The eighteen year old said with venom.

_I am not stealing Sokka from Suki!_ The young bender told herself, her fingers tracing the stone around her neck. _I left to get away from him. Meathead is the one who followed me._ The small girl felt her eyes begin to burn with unshed tears.

"Hold my hair!" The teen drummer ordered, in a strangled voice as she ran/stumbled to the side of a caravan along the path they were on.

Toph raised her head at the request a little lost.

"You better do it." Drina told her. "And stand as far back as you can."

The bender rushed over to Laura who was bending over, while leaning against the caravan. She had her hair pulled up into a lose pony tail behind her head. The blind girl grabbed the drummer's hair freeing the older girl's hands which the teen used to pull her drum, wine skin, necklaces and clothes back, while she began to vomit violently.

The sound of her friend retching was terrible, and the smell was even worse. Toph moved back as far as she could while Laura emptied the contents of her stomach onto the ground. Once her stomach was empty the drummer continued to be convulsed with dry heaves. It took a while for her to settle down.

"You should get her back to her caravan right away." The eldest of the three told the youngest. "She can get her clothes at the next fair. Also you might want to steer her from behind from here on."

"Yeah… time to go home." Laura said straightening up, and wiping her mouth and chin.

"It was good meeting you." Drina told the young bender. "See you next fair."

"Yeah me too." The blind girl replied, waving. "See you next fair."

Drina took the fork in the path between the campgrounds that lead back to her caravan. Toph, steering Laura from behind now, pushed the drummer down towards the camp of Rolling Thunder.

* * *

Zoltan was worried about the Dark Skin. Ever since his return from Gia's caravan the boy had been too quiet, too thoughtful. Deep Blue had returned too quickly to have done anything with the knife fighter, but something had happened, that was obvious. The teen had returned dressed in his water tribe robe, but still wearing the Traveler's sash and pants. His mood quiet and brooding, and had said nothing.

Sokka sat by the fire, his unseeing eyes staring into the flames, while his fingers idly tapped the drum under his arm.

"A little help here." A voice called from out of the darkness.

The swordsman was up and running before the sentence had even ended, his drum rolling on the ground where he had dropped it, the only sign he had been sitting there a moment before.

"Toph?" The young man shouted as he ran in the direction of the young girl's voice. "You ok?"

"I'm fine!" The blind girl reassured her friend as he ran up to her. "But Laura could use some help."

"Deep Bluuuuue!" The drummer called out throwing her arms around the young man's neck, and falling onto him.

Taken by surprise the swordsman grabbed the Traveler around the waist as he received the full force of her breath from close range.

"What happened?" The boy asked in a strangled voice, turning his face away from the pretty drummer's.

Toph mimed drinking from a wine skin, then vomiting.

"Ahh!" The tribesman answered in understanding.

"So you had a good time then?" Sokka asked pushing the teenager back up onto her feet.

"Oh yessssss!" The drummer answered, slapping the young man on the chest. "And so did Misty Green! Tamas really likes her and even got in a fight over her."

"Oh really, he said, looking towards his friend while raising his right eyebrow in an inquisitive manner." Deep Blue said, looking towards the blind bender, while raising his right eyebrow in a somewhat sardonic, but mostly inquisitive manner.

"Yeah… it wasn't much of a fight though." Toph replied, playing with her hair.

"Oh… too bad." The young man replied.

"Laura! What are you wearing?" Mirela asked walking up on the trio.

"It's my new outfit. Isn't it cute?" The teenager replied as she spun around her arms over her head to show off her new outfit. After about the third spin the drummer said, "I don't feel so good."

The water tribesman stepped forward and snatched the Traveler up into his arms before she could fall.

"Take her to the caravan." Mirela told him. "And I'll put her to bed."

"You're so nice." Laura told the swordsman as she threw her arms around his neck.

"Thanks." Sokka replied in a strangled voice, turning his face away from the teen's as he carried her to the cart.

"I wish I had a nice boyfriend like you." The drummer mumbled drunkenly. "Misty you're really lucky."

Toph gave a sarcastic snort as she followed along.

Mirela climbed up and opened the door to the caravan, then turning back remarked,

"I don't know how you'll get her up here. Do you think you can climb up on your own, Laura?"

"Noooo!" The young drummer laughed, holding onto the fifteen year olds' neck.

The teen girl seemed to be enjoying being carried by the strong young man.

"I've got it." Toph said, moving into an earthbending stance.

The tribesman nodded to his friend in understanding and moved to stand to the side of the steps near the door. With a small gesture the green eyed girl raised the blue eyed boy and his burden up on an earth pillar until he was even with the entrance. The swordsman lowered the young drummer till she was standing on the landing near her sister, who took hold of her. The teen girl still had her arms around the young man's neck.

"Thank you, Deep Blue." Laura said, leaning in to kiss the handsome boy, but before she could make contact the earth pillar collapsed and the young man was standing below her on the ground again.

"Thanks." The boy whispered to the young earthbender.

The dancer pulled the drummer into the caravan, but before she closed the door she asked the young man,

"Hand me that bucket would you?"

Sokka looked around and saw the item requested hanging from a hook on the rear of the cart and passed it up to the woman.

"Thanks." Mirela told him taking the bucket. "You two go back to the fire, I'll meet you there after I get Laura to bed."

The young man bowed to the woman then, turning to the blind girl, indicated that she should lead the way back to the House Hold around the fire. The two walked over and joined the group who were still playing and singing.

* * *

Gia sat in her caravan looking into her small mirror. She had heard the voices and knew that Misty Green had returned. The knife fighter knew she should rejoin the House Hold, Z had asked her earlier that day to make sure she was there when the blind girl returned.

The tall woman studied her eyes, blood shot from crying. She wondered who it was that was looking back at her from the glass in her hand.

* * *

Sokka dropped down in his normal spot and Toph plopped down beside him on his left.

"Cold." The blind girl said, ducking under the young man's arm, as she pulled it around her shoulders.

"Do you want a blanket?" The boy asked, as the girl snuggled up against him.

"No, I'm ok now." The twelve year old told him, pushing her body up against his while running her hand over his chest. "What are you wearing?"

"It's my water tribe robe." The boy explained. "I got our clean clothes and packed them for tomorrow so we could get an early start."

"But why did you change?" The girl asked.

"There was a problem with the borrowed shirt I was wearing earlier." The boy explained, in a loud clear voice that carried over the music.

"My shirt!" Zoltan said in a similar voice.

The announcement was met with laughs and giggles from the House Hold.

The swordsman noticed Nadia sitting across the fire from him, as she wave the remnant of the shirt she still had, while giving a short trill that was taken up by the other women around the fire. The tall teen age girl then turned to a another girl sitting next to her and whispered something in her friend's ear which got a wide eyed shocked look in reply.

"Really?" The friend asked the teenage girl with the shirt sleeve.

Nadia giggled and nodded yes in reply. The two teens then turned their intrigued and appraising gazes on the swordsman across the flames from them. Sokka didn't like the hungry look in the girls' eyes.

"How was the party?" Deep Blue asked Misty Green by way of distracting himself from the two feral teens, but also in real interest as to his friend's experiences that night.

"Ok." The young girl answered in a non committal tone, while pushing herself up against the young man even more and settling her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

Meathead really was wonderfully warm.

"They had good food." The blind bender went on. "Oh and I met that old man… Lee. He's really nice."

"Yeah." Sokka agreed. "He's really smart too."

"Then there was a lot of loud music, and some really lame water bending contest." The young girl went on.

"They still have those?" Zoltan asked.

"Yeah." The blind girl answered. "Really lame if you ask me. Then we went to the kissing caravan."

"The what?" Sokka asked.

Toph was pleased to feel the young tribesman's heart beat rise, as she leaned against him. She slid her hand up onto his chest to get a better feel for his reaction as she continued,

"Well kind of a kissing/licking caravan."

The young girl suppressed the grin crawling onto her face as she felt her friend's heart begin to pound in his chest.

"It was kind of boring." She went on. "Then these two guys got in a fight over me, which was ok."

"So I've heard!" Sokka said.

Toph's grin could not be kept down any longer so she turned her face away from the tribesman to hide it.

"Yeah…" She answered as nonchalantly as she could manage. "The guards had to come and break it up so there was no clear winner though."

The twelve year old was having a hard time not laughing, as she felt the young man's heart trying to break out of his chest.

"Then we came home." The young girl told them. "So what have you been doing?"

"Oh… nothing really." The swordsman replied, trying to get his heart under control. "Pretty much just sitting by the fire talking."

_Toph was kissing some guy and had guys fighting over her?_ The young man asked himself. He was surprised that his friend let anyone fight for her. He felt it was much more likely that she would be the one doing any fighting.

"That's not quite true." Zoltan opined. "After the shirt accident Gia finally got the fight she wanted with him."

"Did you have to kiss her foot again?" The young girl asked, some of her bitterness creeping into her tone.

"No…" The tribesman told her.

Toph could hear the embarrassment and sadness in that one word. She could feel the tension and the quickening in the boys heart beat and breathing as she lay against him. Something had happened, she was sure of that, but she had no idea what it was, to affect her friend this way.

"Oh no!" Zoltan agreed. "The only kissing being done was poor Gia kissing the ground at the end. It's too bad you missed it. It was an excellent demonstration of skill and artistry."

"Yeah." Sokka gave a disgusted snort of unhappy agreement.

"It was beautiful." Mirela said, joining Zoltan by the fire. "I've never seen a fighter move with such grace and style; it was more like a dance than a fight."

"He hardly touched Gia." Zoltan said. "He used fans."

"So elegant." Mirela added.

"Oh… Your fans." The blind girl said quietly. _Suki's fans._

The small bender pushed off of the young man and sat up leaning against the toppled bench. The young man's arm slipped off her shoulder and his hand dropped to the girl's back between her shoulders and rested there.

In the silence between the two that followed Mirela turned to her boyfriend and gave him a questioning look.

"Waiting for Gia." Zoltan told her.

The leader of Rolling Thunder then turned and caught Kizzy's eye and pointed off towards a certain caravan and mimed knocking on a door. The archer nodded, stood up, and tossing Zoltan his vest walked away from the fire towards Gia's cart.

"I put Laura on the bottom bunk." The dancer told the young couple. "So if you want to sleep inside tonight you'll have to use the top one. Also watch out for the bucket."

"Thanks." Sokka replied. "I set us up under the caravan again, but if you…" With this last he scratched Toph's back. "… want to use the bunk go ahead."

"I'd rather be on the ground." The young bender said, dropping her head and trying not to purr.

"We're good then." The swordsman told the dancer, lengthening the scratching to include the small girl's entire back.

The blind bender leaned forward to give the young man easier access to her back. _What is wrong with me?_ She wanted to know. When other boys touched her she felt awkward and embarrassed, when Meathead touched her she felt a wonderful warmth and tingle spread through her, and the only embarrassment she felt was from trying to hide her pleasure at his touch.

Toph felt the large strong hand slow then stop and drop away from her. She sent her bending out and felt her friend was looking off at someone who had just entered the circle around the fire. The young man slumped and she could feel his heart beat begin to race, and he seemed to close in on himself. It took a moment before she could identify the new arrival as the tall knife fighter.

The slim woman walked into the light around the group. She had washed her face, changed her clothes and had a light wool scarf wrapped around her throat. She walked around the fire to where Bela was seated. The young Traveler looked up to her and she gave him a small half smile before squatting down and pulled two knives from the group he had retrieved for her. She paused, weighing the weapons in her hands for a moment before standing up walking over to the dark skinned tribesman.

Sokka stood up at her approach, and told her,

"I just wanted to apologize again…"

But the young man was cut off by the fighter's voice telling him to,

"Oh will you just Shut Up about that!"

Gia punched the tribesman in the chest to add emphasis to her words, which caused him take a step back.

"Is he always so pathetic?" The tall woman asked, bending down towards the small bender sitting nearby.

Toph wasn't sure what the knife woman was referring to, so she fell back on her general rule that everything Meathead did was wrong and answered,

"Normally he's much worse!"

"Hey!" The tribesman said defensively, while rubbing the new bruise forming on his chest.

"I don't know how you put up with him." Gia commiserated with the bender.

"It's not easy." The young girl said standing.

The music had stopped by now. The House Hold was watching and listening to the exchange between the three of them.

"He must be good in bed is all I can think." The tall woman told the shorter one.

Toph wasn't sure what the woman was referring to but rules were rules.

"Not really!" The twelve year old stated, with disappointment coloring her tone. "But he is at least warm."

That got a laugh from Gia and the other Travelers.

"Thanks for that." Sokka said, irony lacing his words.

"Well you are." Toph said moving in and sliding her arm around his waist.

Her friend was an idiot but he was still her idiot, and she wanted the tall woman to know that. The water tribe teen laid his left arm over the small girl's shoulders and squeezed her close to him in reply.

"Well that makes up for a lot, especially as winter is coming on." Gia said with a broad smile.

"Is this where you give him the kiss he won?" Mirela shouted out enjoying the show. "Since tonight is turning cold Misty Green might appreciate you warming him up for her."

This was followed by laughter and some trills and whistles from the group. The knife fighter, the bender, and the swordsman were embarrassed by the question each for their own reasons, but none more than the young man who dropped his face towards the ground at the suggestion.

Gia held her hands up for silence.

"In case you hadn't heard." The tall woman said, turning to the blind girl. "I got my ass handed to me by your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!" Toph adamantly stated, dropping her arm and stepping out from under the young man's grip.

This was met with an even louder round of laughter from the group which surprised both the bender and the swordsman.

"In that case…" Kizzy called out. "…there's room for you in my caravan Misty."

"Oh, oh, then can I borrow him, just for a night or two." Nadia called from across the fire, waving the shirt sleeve in her excitement.

This resulted in even more laughter and whistles, which caused even more blood to rush to the young girl's face. Sokka was more fortunate than his friend. His dark skin hid the blood roaring through his face and large ears better than the light tan or even the fading bruise on the small girl's white skin, but both were now generating enough heat to raise a small war balloon.

Gia held up her hands for silence

"You all know a kiss from me is no prize." The tall woman told the House Hold. "Especially for the skill we saw this evening. "

"Now, now!" Zoltan called out. "Just because they are so common does not detract from the skill and energy with which you deliver them."

There was more laughter and cheers of agreement to the leader's comment, not to mention an elbow into his ribs from the shapely dancer standing beside him.

"Still!" Gia called out quieting the crowd. "I have never fought anyone as skilled, nor have I ever been so thoroughly defeated before. There is nothing I have or that I could offer that would be a worthy prize for you Dark Skin."

"Deep Blue doesn't fight for kisses or prizes." The dark eyed leader of Rolling Thunder interrupted. "He trains to get better, and only fights to protect the ones he loves. Their safety and happiness are the only prizes he desires."

There was a cheer of agreement and trills from all the women around the fire at Zoltan's words. The fifteen year old warrior hung his head in embarrassment at the praise from the older man.

"Once again we see why Zoltan is our leader, for he sees the truth in everyone and speaks it." Gia called out. "But I hope that you, Dark Skin, will accept these poor knives as a token of my surrender. They are the best I have. I won them in a tournament where I defeated all who would fight me. They belong with the one man who I could not take."

With that the tall woman held out two beautiful clasp knives of the Travelers. They were of rosewood, with polished steel caps on the ends. They were worn smooth by the fighter's hands and stained with her sweat and blood. They were the most beautiful knives Sokka had ever seen. The blemishes and stains adding more than any new blades could ever have.

The tall young man made a gesture of refusal but was stopped by the look in the dark eyes of the woman before him. He realized, no matter how unworthy he felt, he could not refuse this gift. That thought caused another to enter his mind and the swordsman reached up under the hem of his robe and searching in his sash he held up his right hand.

"Friends don't give friends blades." The tribesman said opening his hand to reveal the two copper coins he had taken from the dark eyed man earlier that evening.

Sokka saw the tears start in Gia's eyes as she looked at the coins and then back to his own. A smile broke out on her face as she accepted the coppers and exchanged them for the two knives.

There were cheers, trills and applause from the group.

"When I'm an old woman surrounded by my grand children." The fighter told the warrior in a quiet voice that only he would be able to hear. "It will be you that I will fondly remember. The man I never had."

Gia leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

"Thank you. For everything." The boy replied bowing to the woman.

When the cheers began to fade Zoltan stepped forward, signaling Gia and Kizzy to join him. Mirela moved up to stand beside the dark eyed man. When the four were standing side to side facing the young couple the leader signaled the rest of the House Hold to rise. The group stood, all now facing the bender and the swordsman.

"We…" The ear ringed man said in a voice loud enough to carry to the group and including them all. "…started this House Hold because no other would have us. Now even though we may be the smallest we know we are the best House Hold in all the tribes of the Travelers."

There were shouts of agreement from the group at this.

"We pride ourselves that we accept only those who will not be accepted by others, as long as they are brave and loyal." Zoltan went on. "Even if they are not Travelers, as long as they have the hearts of the tribes they are welcome. You are two such people. You have embraced us and our ways. You have joined us in our music. You have danced for us. You have fought to defend the honor of the House Hold. You have given us a banner to carry and have given us a name to be proud of."

There was a cry from the group of,

"Rolling Thunder!"

"Now we understand…" With the "we" the leader indicated the entire group. "… that people like you, benders and heroes out of legends are not free. You have duties and obligations that we can't even dream of, but we wanted to let you know that you will always be welcome here. That you have a home and a family that will accept you and that you may travel with through this world."

Toph's heart leaped in her chest. This was like a dream for her. To travel from one festival to the next, surrounded by friends, sisters and brothers she had never had. And to have Sokka beside her, never having to share him with anyone. Laura had said they had enough money for a caravan. Just the two of them traveling and loving one another, sharing their lives, lives that would be full of adventure and celebration.

Sokka felt the tears burn his eyes and his throat close up. To be accepted, to be useful and honored. To be a part of the group, not just the non-bender who is allowed to tag along because he is Katara's brother. To spend the rest of his life with Toph traveling from fair to fair, running scams, learning and fighting and sharing with a tribe of his own. But he knew it could never be.

The young man had too many obligations, to his family, his tribe, to the Avatar, to the world. He couldn't just abandon all that no matter how much he wanted to.

"I…" Deep Blue tried to explain, but his throat was too closed, and there were too many eyes on him for him to be able to say what he need to.

Toph heard it in that one little word. The sadness, the loss, and she realized that her dream was just that, a dream. Sokka was too special, too important to the world for him to have the freedom that she had. She knew that she could stay and he would come to her, visit her, but they could never be together. The world needed him too much. And she needed him too much to live this life.

With tears in her eyes Misty Green moved up to her friend and slipped her arm around his waist and gave him a sideways hug. Deep Blue looked down at his friend and drew his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his side.

"We…" Sokka began after clearing the lump in his throat. "… are deeply honored by your offer, but as you say we have obligations to others in this world and do not have the freedom to join you. Perhaps sometime in the future, if you would still have us, we can travel for a time with you, which would give us great joy. But for now our roads sadly go in different directions."

"You will always be welcome amongst us." Zoltan answered. "Hopefully our roads will cross many times in the course of our travels. And in hopes of that we would mark you as friends of the Travelers."

With this last the dark eyed man reached up and withdrew the gold earring from his left ear and held it out to the dark skinned warrior. Mirela unhooked one of her own and held it out to the small bender.

"I would be honored." Sokka said taking the ring and bowing to the leader of Rolling Thunder.

"As would I." Toph echoed accepting the ring and bowing.

"Does this mean…" Sokka said holding the ring up. "… that you're going to poke a hole in me?"

"It only hurts a little." Toph told him. "Don't be such a wimp."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Sorry this is so late and it's not even that long, and they haven't gotten out of the camp yet. I wanted to get something out and will be out of touch for the next few days, so instead of finishing the chapter decided this would be a good place to stop and get something up. Hopefully the rest of the chapter will go quickly and I will get it out in a week or so.

Thank you all for your patience.

I do have a question, does anyone consider the scene with Gia in the last chapter as a lemon. I don't but I am just curious as to how others see it.

Thanks again to Kagey for her fanart for this story, I am really honored that she has taken the time and likes my story so much, please check her out on DeviantArt. Just search for Kawayui-Kage.

I always try to respond to all reviews if I can. If I missed anyone please forgive me.

To Takezo; Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed it.

To Mental Traveler; Thanks a lot, glad the temptation worked, he is only fifteen after all what guy wouldn't be tempted. :-)

To Btch; Yeah I wanted that scene to read that way, so it is good to hear that it came off that way. Gia got problems what can I say.

To Saxsui; Classy that's me ;-). I like it maybe they could post videos of NFSW. Thanks a lot.

To Nerfornothing; Well you shouldn't be so nice and they might have gotten out of camp this time. :-) No Sokka can't realize that Toph is growing up because then I don't have a story, so it will be a few more chapters before he finally gets it.

To Grockle; Sorry no lemon in this story, though Sokka may have a dream in the next chapter, hmmmm?

To InspirationcomesSlowly; I will never abandon this story, or any story for that matter. I will finish it and I apologize for taking so long with this last update.

To Nerf; Aye aye. (Which in naval parlance means I have heard your order and will carry it out to the best of my abilities. :-)

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	41. Chapter 41

I'll Walk You Home pt 41

Chapter 13

pt. 3

Dreams and Drama

* * *

"It still hurts." Sokka said, tugging at the ring in his left ear lobe.

"Stop whining!" Toph told him, as she pulled her overdress off, rolled it up, and stuffed it into her new duffle bag.

The two young people were standing by Mirela's caravan getting ready for bed. The campsite was quiet, the rest of the Travelers had gone to their own beds, Gia had even, shyly, led Bela by the hand to her caravan.

Toph began to remove her necklaces and put them into the small cloth bags she had purchased from the jewelers. The bags were marked by wooden beads of various sizes and combinations on their draw stings so she could tell which pieces were in which bags. The small bender then stowed them away in her duffle. The new shoulder bag was needed since her old clothes bag could only hold the few items she had started the trip with. The new duffle held all her new purchases including two she had not even unwrapped yet.

Once the blind girl had put away the chains of coins she felt for the jade pendant still around her neck. Her fingers polishing the front of the stone while her thumb traced the etched boomerang on the back.

_You're going to wear it out._ A voice in her head admonished her in a lilting tone.

_It's new, I'm just getting used to it._ She argued with herself.

_Oh… That must be it._ The little voice, heavily laced with sarcasm, agreed.

A breath of cold night air moved through the camp causing the young girl to shiver in her skimpy outfit. She hugged herself to cover her exposed stomach until the breeze had passed. The sound of the bells and bangles on her wrists brought her back to the here and now. She began to try to get the string of small bells off of her right wrist.

"I would like to help with that if you'll let me." Sokka offered.

Toph felt the tribesman's big feet shuffle across the earth between them. Her bending told her that he was in just his loin cloth. She felt him take her right hand and rest it on his warm chest as he began to untie the string of bells.

"Aren't you cold?" The bender asked. "Being naked and all."

The young girl could never understand why her companion always stripped down to just his loin cloth before getting into bed.

"Skin to skin moves the heat in." The boy said as he pulled the bangles off over her hand.

"That's another one of your little sayings, isn't it?" The girl asked.

"It goes along with sleep alone die alone." The boy explained pulling her left hand up to his chest to remove the bells and bangles. "When you're sharing body heat, the best way is skin to skin contact. If you wear clothes to bed you are insulating yourself from the rest of the family. More skin more heat."

The swordsman handed the accumulated jewelry to the young girl then knelt down in front of her. He took her right foot by the ankle and rested it on his thigh as he untied the string of bells on it.

"That's pretty." The young man told her.

"What?" The blind girl asked.

She sounded a little distracted to the young man.

"Your stomach." The boy explained.

"My stomach's pretty?" The girl asked.

"Yes… well no… well actually yes… well gorgeous really." The tribesman tried to explain. "I meant that the gold chain thingy is pretty."

"Oh…" Toph said her hand finding the piercing and tracing the chain. "A… Thanks I guess."

"No problem." Sokka told her pulling the silver off of her foot.

The young man set her foot on the ground then reached for her left ankle and repeated the process. Once she was free he stood up and handed the jewelry to the bender. He noticed that she had goose flesh on her arms and chest. He reached out and pulled her into a tight hug which she was surprised by but did not object to.

"You must be cold." He explained holding her close. "You've got goose bumps."

"Yeah." The young girl agreed, wrapping her arms around his body and laying her face against his chest.

The fifteen year old rubbed the twelve year old's back vigorously.

"See!" The Southern Tribesman said. "Skin to skin moves the heat in."

After a moment or two the young man's hands slowed and he laid his cheek onto the top of the young girl's head. He pulled her in tight against his body.

"Toph…" The boy said trying to find the right words. "Last night… I … well… I would never hurt you. I was just trying to fix your bending, you know."

"It didn't hurt." The young girl told him, the side of her face still against his chest. "It felt good."

"I wasn't trying to make you feel good." The boy said in a rush. "I just wanted to help. I wasn't trying anything, you know. You're my friend… my best friend, and I just wanted you to feel better. I wasn't trying to take advantage, or do anything, or embarrass you, or anything, just help your bending."

Toph could feel the young warrior's heart pounding under her cheek. He seemed to be really nervous and upset about something.

"It's ok." She tried to console him.

"I'm sorry if I pissed you off, or anything." The swordsman tried to apologize.

"You didn't piss me off!" The blind girl told him, a little irritation entering her voice. "It felt good and my bending is better than it's been for a while."

"Ok good." The young man said, shifting his hands on her back. "Because you are my best friend, and I would never do anything to hurt you."

"I know." The small girl told him.

The fifteen year old could feel his friend's jaw moving against his chest when she spoke. The feeling of her small body against his gave him a wonderful warm feeling in his chest, and made the air in his lungs feel funny and light, as if it wanted to rush out of him into the night.

"I… "He began, searching for what he wanted to say. "It just seemed that you were mad at me all day, and I was afraid I had done something to piss you off. And then Gia said something tonight to make me think I had done something wrong last night."

The young man felt the twelve year old girl tense at the mention of the knife fighter's name. Toph pushed herself away from the dark skinned teen, who released her.

"You didn't do anything wrong." The girl told him, a little acid in her voice. "I'm fine."

Misty Green turned and bent over to put the bells and bangles into their sacks in her duffle. The boy turned, averting his eyes, and looked out into the camp.

"It's just that…" The boy went on. "If I ever do anything to hurt you, or make you mad at me… Please just tell me, ok? 'Cause I… well I really like you… you're my friend, and I don't have many… you're my best friend… and I never want that to change, ok?"

"Yeah, I know." The girl said straightening up, allowing the boy to look at her again. "You love me like stewed sea prunes."

"Well I don't know…" The boy said thoughtfully, stroking his chin. "Stewed sea prunes are a rare and highly prized delicacy of my people."

Sokka turned to the young girl and gave her a silly half smile, then reaching out, he held her shoulders and told her,

"Toph you're my friend. I love you more than anything in the world. You're the only one I can talk to about anything and everything. I trust you with my life, with my soul. I can tell you things I would never tell anyone else, even my family. I'd rather be with you than anyone else I know. And I don't want anything I do to come between us. I need you too much for that to happen."

"Even Suki?" The blind girl asked, her eyes burning.

The fifteen year old released the small girl, and shifted awkwardly not knowing what to do with his hands for a moment, then, finally, let them drop to his sides.

"I'm sorry about that." The boy tried to explain. "When Suki came back, I was selfish and rude and spent all my time with her, and the little I had left went to my Dad. That was wrong and I apologize. I'm not perfect but I mean well."

"You've got the not perfect part down." The young girl agreed.

"Thanks." The boy responded with a smile. "It's nice to know you think I'm good at something, even if it's not being good at anything."

"No problem." She told him.

"So do you forgive me for whatever I did to piss you off?" The young man asked.

"You didn't piss me off." The blind girl said, then she stepped in and ran her arms around his chest, pulling him into a hug. "But I'll let it go this time."

Sokka dropped his long arms over Toph's shoulders and onto her back, returning the hug. She felt something touch the top of her head. _Did he just kiss my head?_ She asked herself.

"Thanks." The swordsman said laying his cheek on the spot he had just kissed. "Thanks a lot."

The young man began to run his hands up and down the small girl's back lightly scratching her, going from bare skin to her clothed shoulders and back down to her bare waist. The young bender pulled herself even tighter against the boy. Her hands explored his bare back, luxuriating in the feel of his muscles as they moved under his warm skin. She crushed her small breasts against the hard muscle and bone of his chest, laying her cheek over his heart, her body molding to his.

"But don't think that means I like you." The twelve year old told the tall teen.

"The thought never entered my mind." The boy responded, ending the back scratch and pulling her tighter against him. "Your hair smells really nice."

_I wonder if he is going to lick my neck._ The young girl asked herself. At the thought a warm shiver ran through her.

"You're really cold." The boy apologized.

Sokka began to vigorously rub the bender's back and shoulders.

"We need to get you under your blanket." Deep Blue told her.

The water tribesman released the girl and squatting down pointed under the caravan towards the rear area.

"I set your sleeping mat up at that end, with our blanket. I'm at the front end." He explained.

"Oh." The small bender said hiding her disappointment.

The young man, holding onto the side of the cart, slung himself under the caravan. He had used his rain cloak for a ground cloth and was using Zoltan's blanket for his covers. The boy slipped under the blanket and rested his head on the clothes bag he used as a pillow. Toph crawled under and found her mat and pulled the old blanket over herself. She found the clothes bag she used for a pillow. The two young people were sleeping with their heads under the center of the caravan their feet towards the two ends.

"Well good night Toph." The swordsman said hoisting himself up towards the young girl.

The blind bender felt something rub against her nose. She rubbed back a little distractedly. She missed having her friend sharing her bed with her.

"Good night." She responded.

The two settled in to get to sleep. The girl pulled the blanket up to her face and inhaled the familiar scent of the old blanket. She had missed it. Unconsciously her right hand found the jade pendant at her throat and rubbing the stone she waited as sleep came to her.

* * *

_Ok, this is a dream._ Sokka told himself as Toph shoved him up against the caravan. She was dressed in the white under wraps he had seen her in earlier that day. With a gesture from the earthbender the wooden side of the caravan grabbed the boy's arms pinning him against it.

The small girl lunged at him. Her hands running up and down his chest, her nails leaving red streaks on his dark skin, her mouth sucking and licking as it traveled up onto his neck, where she bit and licked him. He could feel the hard points of her bare breasts against his chest as she straddled him where he lay on the hot desert sand. His hands traveled up her thighs to her chest onto her wonderfully soft small mounds, his face just above hers, as she lay on the sand, under the light of the glow crystals, the soapy wet cloth in his hand moving over her chest then down, down past her stomach, over the silky black curls, as her amazing bright jade eyes opened and stared directly into his as she moaned,

"Sooookkkkkaaaa!"

_Oh Tooophhhhh…Tophhhhh…_"Toph!"

It was the sound of his own voice that woke the fifteen year old from the dream. He looked around him in the dim light of the camp. Toph was asleep, turning restlessly on her mat, her blanket wrapped around her. There was movement in the camp but it was quiet and purposeful. No one was looking towards where he was under the caravan.

Sokka lay there under the blanket for a moment. _Ah Crap!_ The young man cursed to himself. _That was a new loin cloth._ The boy raised his knees to keep the blanket off of himself, and reached into his clothes bag for replacement underwear. _At least I wasn't wearing Z's pants._ The swordsman consoled himself.

* * *

Sokka sat cross legged by the coals of the camp fire. It was early morning, hours before sunrise. He had put some of the last of the fire wood on the remnants of last night's fire, and was using a stick to nurse the new wood into flame. The water tribesman was good with fires and the logs soon caught. By the leader's caravan there was a small party of young men and women talking quietly to Zoltan. Beside the swordsman, neatly folded, were the blanket and clothes he had borrowed from the dark eyed man.

The young man stared into the growing fire, but he wasn't in the Traveler's camp. He was remembering back to another morning, years earlier, about a year after his father had left with the war party. He sat in his family igloo feeling much as he felt now, embarrassed, and defensive. He still remembered his Gran Gran's voice as she told his sister,

"There is no reason for you to get upset. It was nothing Sokka had any control over, and it is perfectly natural for a boy his age."

"Gran Gran he wet the bed!" Little Katara complained indignantly, wiping her leg with a cleaning skin, where she had rolled onto the wet spot.

"Alright, yes he did." The old woman agreed to mollify the girl. "But not in the way you think and it was not his fault. Just like those times when he's asleep and he gets all long and pointy. That's not his fault either."

"Well maybe he can't control his own body, but he doesn't have to poke me in the side with his thing when it gets like that." The little girl said with sibling venom. "And now if he's going to start wetting the bed, well that's just disgusting. Mom wouldn't have put up with that."

"Well you fart in bed!" The boy shot back in self defense.

"So do you!" Katara reposted. "And mine don't blow the covers off."

"No! You make cute little girl farts." The young Sokka threw back at her. "Mine are healthy man's farts, cause I'm a man, not some stupid little girl who tries to hide her farts."

"Your manly farts are not only louder but they stink worse than my farts!" The girl said, throwing the skin at him.

"Do not!" The boy said dodging the missile.

"Do too!" The girl affirmed standing up.

"Do Not! You could make a stink symphony with your cute little farts!" Sokka told her rising to his feet.

The boy then pursed his lips and gave a fairly accurate aural impression of one of his sisters more famously long farts.

"Ooooohhhh!" Katara said, balling her hands into fist and stomping her feet.

The packed snow comprising the floor of the igloo began to tremble.

"Stop it! Both of you!" Gran Gran commanded.

The two siblings turned to the matriarch of the family and became quiet. But it was obvious that this was not over.

"Sit!" The woman commanded, pointing towards the floor.

The two children sat in sullen silence.

"Now listen, both of you." Kanna said, still standing. "You are both growing up, and you are going through perfectly normal changes. Sokka you are a little ahead of your sister but only a little, so you both will have to get used to it. Katara, don't worry soon enough you will be wetting the bed yourself, believe me. From now on I want you both to wear your loin cloths all the time."

"But I didn't do anything." Katara objected. "It's all his fault."

"I already told you it is not anyone's fault it is just part of growing up." Gran Gran explained. "So from now on, Both, of, You, will wear your loin cloths anytime you're indoors, and especially when you go to bed. Is that understood?"

"Yes Gran Gran." The two siblings agreed.

* * *

"Can't sleep?" Zoltan asked as he sat down next to Deep Blue by the fire.

"Sorry?" Sokka asked being pulled out of his thoughts by the question and looking around him for the first time.

"Can't sleep?" The dark eyed man asked again.

"Oh… yeah." The younger man replied.

"Dreams?" Z asked.

"Yeah." The swordsman answered mournfully.

"The war?" The Traveler queried.

"What? Oh no, I only wish." The fifteen year old said.

"Must be girls then." The leader of the house hold said with authority.

Sokka laughed at that.

"Girl, actually." The younger man finally said. "How'd you know?"

"We're guys," The older man said. "It's either fighting or fucking with us."

The teen gave a snort of laughter at that, then he grew quiet and stared into the fire for a time. Zoltan saw his companion poking something in the coals and there was the scent of burning cloth in the smoke.

"Too bad we have to grow up." The blue eyed boy finally said to the fire. "Sex ruins everything."

Zoltan was quiet thinking for a moment then told his younger friend,

"Yes, sex is messy and complicated but without sex there would be no love. We're guys, we see a pretty girl and we want to have sex with her. Any pretty girl, maybe not even that pretty. So we go and talk to her, and we find out about her and hope that she likes us enough to have sex with us. If we're lucky she likes us and we like her, and we fall in love with her. 'Course we can fall in love with her just by seeing her but it's nice if we get to know her first. Then the more we get to know her we might even become friends but we fall in love with her first, and even before that we want to have sex with her."

"I always do things backwards." The teen sadly responded.

"You fell in love with your friend?" The dark eyed man asked.

"Yeah." The blue eyed man answered.

"Oh, sorry, that stinks." Z replied.

"My best friend." The boy reported.

"And now you want to have sex with her?" The ear ringed man asked.

"Yeah." The young man replied with a snort of self derision.

"Well that sucks the big hairy wet one." The older of the two commiserated placing a hand on the younger's shoulder. "Have you told her that you love her?"

"I can't." Sokka told him, the misery evident in his voice. "If I do then I lose my best friend. I don't have the guts for that."

"You have to tell her sometime, otherwise it will just fester and poison your friendship with her."

"Yeah, I know." The teen said. "I just want to finish this one thing before I do."

The two young men, the twenty something and the teen sat for a time watching the fire.

* * *

Toph knocked on the door to the caravan.

"Laura it's me." The blind girl said. "I want to return the clothes I borrowed and I need to change."

There was no response from inside. The bender knocked again, louder this time. She was grumpy and not feeling well. Sokka had gotten her up early to get ready to leave, and something she had eaten last night must not be agreeing with her, since she had cramps down below. She had the clothes she had borrowed, now freshly washed, and her traveling clothes under her arm. She wanted to put on some real underwear and real clothes, but she wasn't going to change out in the open.

The young girl finally gave up on rousing the teen age Traveler and just entered the caravan. She stubbed her toe on the bucket by the bunk beds, but eventually felt her way to the back where she would have room to change.

Toph was nearly finished when she felt the caravan shift as someone came up the stairs and then she heard the door open. A moment later she heard Mirela's voice ask,

"Is someone there?"

"Just me." The blind girl replied.

"Oh Misty," The dancer said entering the caravan. "How can you see in here without a candle?"

"Oh..." The young girl said wistfully. "Any brighter and I wouldn't be able to see at all."

"What? Oh sorry, I forgot." The woman said.

Toph heard the sound of spark rocks and smelt the scent of perfume and wax. She finished dressing then told the dark haired woman,

"I put the clothes I borrowed on the top bunk."

"Thank you Misty." The dancer replied.

The woman pulled the young girl into a hug, telling her,

"Remember Misty, you are a heartbreaking dancer of the Travelers now. You have a home here any time you need it."

"I'll never forget." The blind girl said, as tears started in her eyes.

The two women broke the hug and Toph picked up the bundle of clothes she had worn the night before, and headed for the door, but was stopped by the dancer.

"Don't forget your money belt." Mirela told her taking her free arm.

The Traveler picked up the heavy studded belt from where it lay hanging off of the bunk beds, and turning the small girl around, began to put it around her waist. Toph was surprised when the dancer pulled the belt off of her.

"Something's funny here." Mirela said in a thoughtful voice.

Misty Green wasn't sure what was going on.

"This isn't right." The older of the two said, in an angry voice. "Laura! Laura! Wake up."

"Wha?" The young drummer said, still half asleep.

The twelve year old backed away from the angry dancer and the confused drummer, until her back hit the door.

"Get up!" Mirela told her sister in a low dangerous voice. "I said get up!"

"Please M'ela, I'm sick." The younger sister complained.

"And whose fault is that." Was the pitiless reply from the elder. "Now get up!"

Toph heard the teen fumble out of bed, her bells and bangles ringing as she climbed to her feet.

"What?" The drummer asked.

"Where is it?" The dancer demanded.

"Where's what?" Was Laura's sulky reply.

"Don't lie to me." Mirela ordered in a quiet voice. "Where did you hide it?"

"Mirela please..." The teen begged. "My head is splitting and I feel sick. I don't know what you're talking about."

It was silent for a moment then Toph heard a loud smack.

"I said don't lie to me." The elder sister said her voice seething.

"M'ela..." The drummer started but another smack stopped her voice.

The blind girl heard someone begin to cry. She felt for the handle to open the door and escape.

"Toph, are you ok." It was Sokka's voice from outside the door.

The young girl pulled the door open and stumbled out of the caravan, she nearly fell down the stairs but two strong hands grabbed her around the waist, _Sokka's hands_, she told herself, she would recognize his hands anywhere. The young man hoisted her down and onto the ground.

In contact with her element again, Toph was finally able to use her bending to sense her surroundings. Her enhanced bending could even sense some of what was happening in the caravan.

Deep blue looked through the open door and saw Mirela holding Laura by the younger girl's long hair while her right hand was out and open poised for another slap.

The young woman stood crying covering her face with her arms.

"Please... no more..." The drummer pleaded.

Mirela tried to slap her sister again but the blow landed with no effect on the younger girl's arm. The dancer then drew her hand back and slapped the teen across her breasts, which earned another cry of pain.

The sound was too much for Toph, she was suddenly back home with Madame Wang and Poor Girl. The blind bender backed away from the end of the cart.

"What have you got under there?" Mirela demanded letting go of the drummer's hair and pulling open the tie on her blouse.

"I'm sorryyyy." The teen cried out lowering her hands to protect her chest.

The dancer ripped the younger girl's wrapper open. Sokka dropped his eyes to the ground.

"OW! OW! PLEASE!" The girl screamed.

"I ought to rip these off, you stupid little slut." Mirela yelled.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry." Laura cried.

"Where is it?" The dancer demanded. "Tell me where it is!"

"I don't know what you want!" The teen said through her tears.

The older sister let go of her younger sibling, who collapsed onto the lower bunk weeping. Mirela began searching the top bunk, pulling off the covers and then feeling under the mattress. Finding nothing, the dancer then began to feel the straw filled sack that was the mattress. After searching for a time the elder said,

"Too stupid to even do a good job of hiding it."

Mirela pulled open the end of the mattress and reached inside. Sokka saw her pull a small sack out and hold it up to the teen.

"What's this?" The dancer demanded.

"I don't know!" The drummer answered.

"Don't lie to me!" The elder commanded, holding out the sack preparatory to hitting her sister with it.

"After all she did for you." The dancer said. "After everything she gave you. She was family!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." The drummer answered through her tears.

Mirela pulled back again ready to strike the younger woman but was just able to stop herself, but after a moment she reached down and pulled the weeping teen off of the bunk.

"Get Out!" The dancer ordered. "Get out of my home you stupid little thief!"

Mirela pushed her sister out the door. The teen came flying out of the caravan head first, and would have landed face first on the ground if Sokka had not caught her, and set her on her feet.

The dancer grabbed up the young bender's studded belt and jumped down from the cart, grabbing her sister by her hair, and pulling her towards the blind bender. The drummer, weeping and holding her blouse closed was dragged up to the green eyed girl.

"Give it back and apologize!" The eldest sister commanded, pushing the purse into her sister's hands.

"I'm sorry Misty." Laura said through her tears, holding out the sack of coins. "I didn't mean it."

The small bender didn't know what to do and just stood there.

"Toph, go ahead and take it." The water tribesman advised.

The blind girl took the purse and held it to her chest.

"I'm sorry." The teen Traveler told the earthkingdom girl. "It's just that you have so much, and we have so little."

Mirela wrenched Laura back by the hair eliciting another cry of pain and more tears.

"Are you starving?" The dancer demanded.

"No." The teen answered.

"Are you naked?" The elder asked, shaking her sister when she did not respond. "Answer me!"

"No." The younger sibling replied.

"Do you sleep in a ditch by the road?" The dark eyed woman demanded.

"No." The smaller one answered. "I just wanted to get something nice is all."

"You don't deserve anything nice." Mirela told her, shaking the drummer's head.

The dancer then let go of her sibling's hair and grabbed the silver pendant on the teen's neck.

"This is the only nice thing you have and you don't deserve it after what you've done." The elder sister said pulling on the pendant.

The dark eyed woman tried to rip the necklace off of Laura, but the clasp held and chain was too strong, so she dropped the belt and using both hands harshly pulled the chain over her younger sister's head. She then handed it to the blue eyed boy standing nearby. Sokka took it. He could see many strands of dark hair had been pulled out and were still attached to the chain. The young drummer collapsed beside the cart.

"M'ela? What's wrong?" Zoltan asked running up out of the darkness.

The dancer looked at the dark eyed leader of Rolling Thunder, and in a scathing voice, directed at the sobbing teen, told him,

"We have a thief in the camp. And although I should throw her out of my home, so she could become the whore she has always wanted to be, she is family so I must keep and protect her. Therefore when the draft animals arrive we will hitch up our wagon and leave the camp, never to return."

"I'm sorry!" Laura cried from the ground at the announcement.

"Mirela," The leader of the Travelers said after a moment. "You are free to leave our camp anytime you choose. But I ask you to stay. You say you have a thief in your caravan, but I ask has she returned what was taken?"

"Answer him Laura!" The dancer commanded.

"Yes." The drummer replied through her sobs.

"Is the one she stole from satisfied?" The dark eyed man then asked.

It was quiet for a moment then Sokka asked,

"Toph, are you satisfied?"

"Oh... yes... I am satisfied. She has been punished enough." The blind girl told them.

"Then I am satisfied that there has been no theft and that there is no thief in our camp." The leader of the House Hold said. "If you want we can put it to a vote when we camp tonight but I don't think it will be necessary."

"Thank you Zoltan." Mirela said, bowing to the leader.

Laura lunged forward and lying on her stomach she grabbed the boot of the dark eyed man and kissing it told him,

"Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm so sorry and it will never happen again. I promise! I promise!"

"All right, all right." The dark eyed man said, obviously embarrassed by Laura's reaction. "That's settled then."

Zoltan reached down and pulled the drummer to her feet and passed her to her sister.

"Alright then," The leader said, looking around him. "We have a lot of work to do if we are going to leave on time, so best get to it."

"Don't think this is over." Mirela told her sister as she led her to the steps of the caravan and helped her climb in.

The dancer picked up the studded leather belt from where she had dropped it and Sokka took it from her. The dark haired woman then turned and bowed to the three watchers and asked them,

"Forgive me for my outbursts, and for involving you in my family troubles."

"Your family is our family." Sokka said, returning the bow. "Your troubles are our troubles."

Mirela bowed again, then with tears in her eyes climbed up into the caravan and closed the door.

"Here come the wranglers with the animals." Zoltan said, pointing to a party of men and women guiding a herd of ostrich horses into the center of the camp. "I have to get the wagons ready for travel."

"Zoltan," the water tribesman said holding out the silver necklace. "Please hang onto this for Laura. When you think she deserves it, ask Mirela to give it back to her."

"Of course." The dark eyed man said, taking the pendant, then he motioned for Toph to come over to him.

Putting an arm around the small bender's shoulders and grasping the blue eyed teen by the forearm, the leader of Rolling Thunder told them,

"I will say good bye here. It has been an honor to have shared food, drink, and fire with you two. We have marked you as Travelers, never forget that you belong with us, and will always be welcome."

Toph awkwardly hugged the dark eyed man, while Sokka shook his arm.

"The honor was ours." The water tribe warrior said.

* * *

The blue eyed swordsman watched as the wagons moved out onto the road heading north. The sun was still not up but the sky was starting to lighten and turn blue.

The water tribesman saw an ostrich horse carrying two archers come out between the shops by the side of the road and trot up to one of the caravans. The taller of the two riders, a woman, spoke to the woman driving the cart, while the smaller of the two, a young teen boy climbed nimbly up onto the roof of the cart. The boy looked around him from his new vantage point, and looking to the south he saw the teen dressed in blue. The young archer pulled an arrow out of his quiver, tossed it up into the air and caught it one handed. The boy then gave a thumbs up to the swordsman. Sokka smiled and waved back as the cart moved down the road.

"I'll miss them." Deep Blue of Rolling Thunder said to his companion.

"Me too." Misty Green, heartbreaking dancer of the Traveler's answered.

The young 'not a couple' turned and started on their own road heading south into the mountains.

After about a half hour of walking the young girl commented while shifting her duffle,

"I wish I hadn't bought so much stuff."

"That makes two of us." The young man agreed shifting some of his much heavier load.

They continued on for a little way when the boy began to curse fervently,

"Fuck! Fuck!... Fuck!"

"What's wrong?" The young bender asked.

"I just remembered." The young man answered, frustration very evident in his voice. "I forgot to buy that stupid blanket for you."

"Oh well... You probably got distracted." Toph said, as a little smirk slid onto her face. "I guess we'll just have to share."

With that the blind girl took the young man's hand and began to pull him up the road.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer :** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

I apologize for being so late with this (Ayriannah will not be happy with me for this). More feelings and drama. I can't wait to get back to some nice simple killing and maiming.

YES! They are finally out of the Travelers camp and on the road again. The Travelers pull you in with silken scarves and hold you with chains of gold, music, dance, and affection. For a weak writer such as myself it is hard to break away.

This is a short chapter (when did six thousand words become a short chapter?). But It took me so long I wanted to get something up and this seemed like a good place to end.

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

Don't forget Kagey's fan art over on Deviant Art, just search for kawayui-kage on DeviantArt.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

Takezo: thanks,

Nerf-or-Nothing: Thanks so much. Sorry this one was late as well.

TophSokka: Thanks, I feel the same way. I didn't want to cheat on the ages. If they were twenty and twenty three it would be no problem but because Toph is so young it adds another layer of conflict.

Nerf-or-Nothing: We'll just have to see what happens to all those outfits she bought. :-). But for right now she's happy to be in her travel clothes. The coming chapters will have some more Tokka time so I hope you will enjoy them.

TheIrregular: Thank you very much, I am glad you are enjoying the story. On the piercing; you're right I had her get it as a rite of passage into the teenage world so it is symbolic and as such I am going to have her keep it. After all she is not a close quarter's fighter so it shouldn't be a problem. On the handsome Sokka; sorry about that, I'll try to watch it in the future. Thanks very much for the heads up.

CZR: Thanks, sorry the last couple chapters have been so late. I will try to be better for the rest of the story.

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading


	42. Chapter 42

I'll Walk You Home pt 42

Chapter 14

pt. 1

Letters

* * *

The young earthbender and the water tribe teen walked up the ancient winding road into the mountains. It was a fine fall morning and within a couple of hours the sun was bathing the forest in low warm syrupy amber light, which was totally lost on the young "not a couple".

The young girl, whose cramps were still bothering her, was incapable of seeing the amazing effect the sun was having as it sent shafts of light through the trees. The young man, whose blue eyes could see the effect, was not registering the beauty of it in his brain, since he thought he was going to need a shoulder-ectomy not to mention a back replacement, due to the load he was carrying.

"We were just here like an hour ago!" The blind girl accused coming to a stop on the road. "Is this stupid road going in circles, Meathead?"

Toph was not happy, and her mood was reflected in her voice. She was now carrying over twice the load she had started this trip with, having to carry half of the food they had purchased in the town as well as most of the clothing she had bought, not to mention the cramps, which weren't as bad as they had been but they were definitely still there.

Sokka stopped and walked back down to his friend. The gap between the two had been growing as they had walked along. He wiped the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his robe, being careful to avoid the throwing knife holsters on his forearm. The load on his shoulders was equal to the weight of the young bender and all she was carrying, and going uphill was making him wish for the days back home when all he had to do was drag a sled with a tiger seal carcass across a nice flat, snow covered, ice sheet.

"We're not in the same spot." He answered, looking over the downhill side of the road. He could just make out the lower section of the highway through the trees.

"We're about… oh, say thirty paces higher up the valley then we were." He explained. "And it was only about a half an hour ago, not an hour."

"So you're saying we spent half an hour just to walk thirty paces." The girl asked, exasperation at the slow progress more than evident in her voice.

"Well, yeah." The boy said defensively. "In order to keep a three percent grade the Roamers built switchbacks. The road cuts back and forth up the side of the valley. For every thousand paces we go forward, well sideways actually, we go up thirty. It's like tacking into the wind."

Toph's hands bunched into two fists as she listened to Stupid. _There he goes again!_ She thought. Using words she didn't understand to explain things that didn't make any sense. She was going to hit him with a rock someday when he did that.

"Come over here!" She commanded standing in the middle of the ancient highway.

The young man dutifully stood next to the young girl, who grabbed him by his shirt and set him in the spot behind her.

"Grab my waist!" She ordered.

The blind bender felt the young man's large hands settle on her waist, just above her hips, and even in her current state of anger and frustration with the boy, the contact sent a warm thrill through her.

"Hang on!" She told him, as she took her horse stance.

Sokka watched as the earthbender rose up onto her toes while raising her arms over her head. His stomach felt funny, at first he thought it was just due to his close contact with the beautiful young girl, but then looking around her realized that the ground under them was sinking. They were soon in a deep, steep sided bowl composed of the solid paving stones of the Roaming road. Then Toph dropped down onto her heels as her arms shot down to her sides, and the young man lost all contact with his stomach as the earth rebounded and the two of them where shot up the side of the valley.

The warrior looked down on the tops of the trees far below him.

_Happy Place! Happy Place! Happy Place!_ He chanted in his mind as they flew over the forested slope.

The tribesman would have liked to have closed his eyes but then he wouldn't be ready for the landing, so he had to watch through the whole gut wrenching experience. Soon enough they were slowing in their ascent, then they were falling towards the road three switchbacks farther up the slope. Just before they touched down the road surface began to recede into the earth gently slowing their descent, as Toph repeated the form. Then her arms came down, the earth rebounded, and they were flying high over the forest again, towards the next opening over the road.

_Happy Place! Happy Place! Happy Place!_ The young man continued to chant to himself.

* * *

Katara sat alone in the Gaang's house in Ba Sing Se. _Sorry… The Avatar's residence,_ as it was starting to be called, she corrected herself with a little bitterness.

_This house is too big!_ The Water Tribe teen told herself. _That was the problem._ She didn't care what Toph, or Zuko, or Mai, or Ty Lee, or Iroh, or anyone else said about what a small comfortable little house it was. They had all grown up on estates, or in palaces. The young water bender had spent her life sharing a small one room snow hut with her entire family, except for the times she had shared an even smaller tent with that same family. So to her this two bedroom, one bath house was huge, her village could live in it comfortably.

The late mornings and early afternoons were the worst. In the early mornings Aang would fly the young water bender to their training ground outside of the city. There were plenty of training areas for earthbenders in the city but none that really were any good for waterbending, so the two of them had, early in their stay in Ba Sing Se, flown on Appa scouting for a place that was unoccupied and had a good source of water. They had found a good spot near the river and Appa flew them there every morning.

Iroh joined them on some mornings. Fire bending was not very popular in a city that had been occupied by the fire army. Few people recognized the Dragon of the West who had liberated Ba Sing Se. The only time the old master was recognized it was as the kind old man who owned the Jasmine Dragon Tea Shop.

But after training, Aang was off to meetings, and Iroh was off to the tea shop and most days Katara spent all alone in the big house. Back home at the South Pole the young woman's day was filled with activity. Cleaning the igloo and the clothes, scraping and tanning skins, making clothes from those skins, preparing meals, and any free time was spent fishing to supplement her brother's hunting. It required two people to survive in the harsh environment of the Southern Water Tribe, one to hunt and one to do everything else.

That wasn't quite fair and Katara knew it. Her brother had a tremendous work load having to supply the entire village with food. When he could he would help with chores at home, but he spent most of his time roaming the ice on foot, or paddling his kayak searching for game.

And that was the problem. The young woman had nothing to do, and no one to do it with. Oh yes, she was a member of the International Council but it only met once a month. Aang as the Avatar was on many more councils and committees and was busy almost every day. Iroh was at his tea shop most of the day and evening. She missed her friends.

The dark skinned girl even missed Toph. She didn't like to admit it but she had grown to love the sarcastic, spoiled, willful little earthbender as she would a sister. And although the blind girl could drive the water bender insane she was family, and a lot of fun.

Most of all Katara missed her brother. It had been two weeks since he had left and this was the longest time he had ever left her on her own. Even when he was out hunting he would usually be back before the week was out. Sokka was not just family, but he was her friend and companion as well. He was the one who could always be counted on to be there for her no matter what. Now he was gone for Tui knew how long, and she was all alone.

The young bender wiped the tears from her eyes. Her morning visitors would be here soon and she should have tea ready for them.

First there would be Chung Yee from the World Council secretariat. Her brother had arranged that any mail sent to the Avatar would be delivered to the Council. There was too much for one person to handle. The Secretariat had a group of scribes that read the letters (over a hundred pieces of mail a week at this point). Answered all they could and forwarded them on to the proper authorities for action. Most of the time, the response was that the Avatar could not attend the opening of the restaurant, shop, street, etc… due to prior commitments. Anything that actually concerned Aang was forwarded to the house and delivered the next day by Chung Yee. Who would stay for an hour or so discussing current events, Council business (she was a member after all, even if the Council only met once a month) and trends in the correspondence with Katara.

The next would be Miu who was a young woman, fresh out of the University, that Sokka had hired to take care of his different business interest in the city. Apparently her brother's charcoal pen and note book were big sellers at the University book store, and there was even a team of craftsmen and earthbenders installing rain baths in the city, all being run by Miu and financed by Sokka's ill gotten gains.

The young water bender loved Toph as a sister but she thought the young earthbender was a very bad influence on her brother sometimes. The two were constantly pulling scams, mostly against the gamblers in the Lower Ring. Sokka used the money to pay for his other interests, which at least was a constructive use of it.

* * *

Iroh opened the door to the tea cupboard of the Jasmine Dragon and inhaled deeply. The cupboard was actually a small room, the walls lined with chests of drawers, twenty small drawers on top and two larger tilt bins in the bottom of each chest. Ten chests for two hundred drawers, two hundred teas or blends from all over the world. From the most exotic one of a kind, to the most common place everyday blends in the larger bins. The aroma made the old man's heart sing in his chest. Anyone standing in the room would have seen the glint of the dragon in the firebender's golden eyes as he looked upon his treasure.

The gray bearded man smiled as he walked into the room, a teapot held in the crook of his left arm as his right hand traveled along the rows of drawers. There were perquisites that came with being the Grand Master of the Order of the White Lotus. The Jasmine Dragon was an excellent cover for the society. No one remembered the old firebender who liberated Ba Sing Se, few had actually seen him on the day of Sozin's Comet, and those who had did not associate the old tea shop owner with the Dragon of the West. Some of his old customers still called him Mushi.

No one questioned all the letters and small packages that arrived at the shop from the old man's "freelance tea buyers" throughout the world. Thus information flowed in and orders flowed out with not one eyebrow raised, or one question being asked.

Iroh stopped at one of the bins of black tea. Not his favorite but he had a lot of work to do today and he could use the energy the tea would give him. After all, this was his first pot of the day (which wasn't actually true. He had had a pot when he had gotten up this morning, but it was a small two cup pot so he really didn't count that. Then he had a pot when he had returned from his training session with the Avatar and the waterbender, but it was actually the same two cup pot with new tea in it so it still didn't count as a real first pot of the day.).

The old man ladled the tea into the pot. One for the pot, once for each cup the pot would hold (four), and a last one for himself.

The firebender warmed the pot in his hands as he walked to his office in the back of the shop.

After pouring in the hot water and gently swirling the tea the Grand Master of the Order set it on his desk to steep, and took up the first letter of the morning mail. It would be the first of many. There were always more reports after a weekend.

The old man scanned through the reports from all over the world. Disturbing reports of opposition to peace and the new Fire Lord from inside the Fire Nation court, and the Fire Army, Navy, and Air Forces, which would have to be looked into and action of some sort taken to prevent a possible coupe, or worse an all out civil war.

Then there were the reports of unusual meetings and intrigue within the Northern Water Tribe court. Chief Arnook was up to something but Pakku had been unable to find out just what was being planned. Even Pakku had been kept out of the loop on what was going on.

Then there were the reports from all over the Earth Kingdom. The absent king was still missing and no news of his whereabouts had come to any members of the order, let alone any sightings of the monarch, not even in rumor. This could lead to very serious consequences for not just the kingdom but for the world as well. Without even a figure head the country could devolve into anarchy and civil war.

Although there were not even any rumors of Kuei's location there were plenty of rumors running through the kingdom. Mostly about the 'Dark Ones', or at least the 'Dark One', rumors that the male twin had been seen deep in the Si Wong conducting strange and arcane rituals.

Iroh grunted in frustration. These reports of the Dark Ones always came from subjects of the earth kingdom and assumed that the reader knew more than the old general did. He had once asked Bumi about these legends of the Dark Ones but the mad king's reply was, well, crazy and disjointed to say the least, and made no sense to the old firebender. The Grand Master would have to find someone familiar with Earth Kingdom legends that would be able to explain the Dark Ones to him in an intelligible manner.

Then there were the rumors of innocent young people that had been turned into secret assassination squads by the Dai Li during the war. The old general was familiar with these rumors. They had started in Ba Sing Se a month or two ago, usually after some trouble with gamblers, and a lot of destruction of gambling houses. But now they had moved out into the country side to the far south of the city, with the destruction of a restaurant and a town square. Chaos seemed to be reigning over the Earth Kingdom.

There was one glimmer of hope in all the reports, the rumors of this Black Lotus. The Black Lotus who had singlehandedly nearly ended the slave trade in the Si Wong. Who was now said to roam the land defending the helpless and restoring hope to a war ravaged world.

This brought the old firebender to a report he had dreaded reading. It was from Piandao's acolyte, the young water tribe warrior.

Iroh remembered the first report from the young swordsman. The beginning had been full of his terrible calligraphy and illustrated with his ridiculously bad drawings, but it was a joy to read with all its terrible puns and jokes and pictures of battles with sea serpents. But then there had been the hurried scrawl of kidnapping and pursuit and battle and death. There were no more illustrations after that, just terse notes and sad reflections. It had saddened the old general to see the bright young man's spirit so broken.

The old firebender picked up this latest report and was happy to see that the illustrations, no matter how badly drawn, were back, as was the hope. With descriptions of the ancient road and the villages that the young swordsman and the small earthbender had traveled through.

_Piandao had made a good choice there_. Iroh thought to himself as he read the letter. The blue eyed teen was smart and had a good mind, and the old general enjoyed reading this new report from the young man's travels, even if the calligraphy left a lot to be desired. _The young man was very clever._ The old man thought but then an unbidden memory came back to him of his first night in the house he was currently sharing with the Avatar and the water bender.

* * *

It had been after the musical performances and the old man was just leaving his shared bedroom to make a pot of tea to sip as he settled into bed for the night. The door to the girls' bedroom was just across the hall and he could not help but hear the raised angry voice of the commander of the Kyoshi warriors.

"If you're going to miss him so much why don't you just go with 'Dreamy' and you can share him with his little Cave Troll!"

The door then flew open and the general was presented with the tear streaked face of the young acrobat. As the pretty young girl's eyes blinked through her tears the old man saw the recognition in them as Ty Lee saw Zuko's uncle in the hallway before her. The young girl ducked her head and issuing a quiet wail of hurt and embarrassment she ran down the hall disappearing into the bathroom at the end of the hall. The firebender looked back at the still open door to the girls' room and saw the face of the Kyoshi leader, tears running down her hurt angry face as she slammed the door shut.

Never having been comfortable with women's tears, The Dragon of the West retreated quickly to the common room of the house only to be confronted with the young waterbender, sitting on the couch being consoled by the Avatar as she wept tears of loss.

"It's just we've never been apart before." The teen girl gulped out between sobs. "I just feel I'll never see my brother again."

This last ended in a storm of tears that drove the old general out of the room into the garden for some tranquility. Tranquility was not in the garden at the moment, but the small earthbender was. She was sitting on a stone bench, her face in her hands as she wept bitter tears.

"Oh… Meathead!" She cried. "Why do you have to ruin everything?"

The grey bearded firebender ducked quietly back into the house, finally arriving in the kitchen, where the cause of all the weeping and wailing was sitting on a stool eating leftovers.

"Quiet night." The boy observed, completely oblivious to the havoc he had created around him.

* * *

Iroh picked up the letter and looked at it again. Yes Piandao's student was smart, _well smart in some departments…_ The old man thought shaking his head. …_but completely lacking in others._

The old man read through the letter. The beginning was about an incident in a town called My Lot. The young man extolled the professionalism and skill of the first sergeant and the executive officer of an Earth Kingdom cavalry company controlling the town. There was also a paragraph explaining that the death toll in the Si Wong incident was now up to five, all earthbenders. This struck a familiar note in Iroh's mind, reminding him of an earlier report from a member of the order, concerning the activities of the Black Lotus. He made a quick note to himself using his new Charcoal Pen in the blank book he had recently purchased for this purpose.

The old firebender did not like these new things, he found them esthetically lacking but in the short time he had them they were just so convenient that he now found he could not live and work without them. Even his staff was using them to take orders in the shop.

The old general was glad to see that the style and writing was much more flowing now then it had been at the end of the last report, though much less legible. The report told of conditions on the road and even had a sketch or two to illustrate different points of interest. The young swordsman had even asked for any information the order might have on two young people. A young swordswoman named Smellerbee and an archer named Longshot. The request had a bad sketch of the two along with a written description, and that they were last seen in the tunnels of the Dai Li under Lake Laogai.

The old man thought back, there was something familiar about the pair. Then he remembered, it was aboard the ferry to Ba Sing Se. He had met the couple and had mistaken the young girl for a boy, much to his embarrassment. He made another note to himself to send out inquiries to the members of the order, especially those working on the records of the Dai Li.

The letter ended with a sketch of the young earthbender sleeping quietly by the ancient roadway. The old man smiled. It was good to see that the young warrior had recovered and apparently the young girl as well.

The next report was from the member of the order who called himself "the RealLee", which brought a smile to the old firebenders lips. He would like to meet this other old man who had a dry sense of humor and a quick mind.

Iroh was on his third cup when he finished reading the last of his correspondence. He picked up the letter from Piandao's acolyte again.

"Interesting." The old man said as he looked at a large map of the world attached to his office wall.

The map was covered with pins. Each pin had a small colored flag attached to it, and a small note written on the flag. These were ostensibly locations of tea farms and trading centers all over the world but some were of more interest to the Grand Lotus then they were to Mushi the tea shop owner.

Iroh put down the cup and searched for the first report he had received from the water tribesman that had come in the week before. This one had the full report of the incident in the Si Wong.

"Five dead." The gray bearded man said looking at the report. "All benders."

The son of Azulon put the first report on top of the one he had just received. There was no mention of this Black Lotus in either report. He took another sip of his tea as he thought.

The firebender put down his cup and picked up the report from The RealLee. He held the three letters in front of him comparing what was said in each, and looking at the map for confirmation of his theory.

The old man put down the reports and poured himself the last cup of tea from the pot, held it to his nose to savor the aroma and mulled over what had been in the reports he had been receiving.

There had always been two groups within the Order of the White Lotus. One part, usually the majority, had always seen the society as an organization strictly for the gathering of information. But as the war had dragged on, a second group had risen. This smaller group made up of the more active members of the order, had seen a need for the society to take action, to choose sides and make a difference in the world. The ultimate triumph of this second faction had been the liberation of Ba Sing Se.

But now that the war was over the first group was reasserting it's self. They wanted the order to retreat back into the safety and anonymity of a strictly information gathering society.

Iroh sipped his tea and looked down at the report from The RealLee. It was full of rumors and reports of the Black Lotus. Lee was convinced that the water tribe teen was this secret warrior for good. Lee even asked if this was a new group within the order that had been sent out to protect the weak from the strong, a group to act where all others had failed.

"A group to act where all others failed?" The firebender asked his cup of tea.

The Dragon of the West smiled and the glint returned to his golden eyes.

"Not a group, but one man." The firebender said. "A sword to act where none would."

In the Fire Nation there were old, old legends and prophecies of a great hero know as the "Sword of Agni", who would return one day to save the world from evil. Perhaps it was time for the Order of the White Lotus to have a sword too, if not to save the world, at least to give it a nudge in the right direction.

It was an excellent compromise. One man acting in the interest of the society, but without any overt ties to the Order. The conservatives would still object but they would not be involved and it was far more discreet than a group of master benders flying the flag of the White Lotus going into battle.

Piandao's acolyte was the perfect choice. He had already started his own legend in the Si Wong, and from what Lee had reported the water tribesman was very good at covering his tracks. Lee was almost convinced that the blue eyed teen knew nothing about the Black Lotus.

The teen's own reports only told of the stories but made no claims for credit or glory. Yet this one action had nearly ended the slave trade in the desert. That was true discretion.

"The Sword of the White Lotus." The Grand Master said with a smile.

The old man liked the sound of that. It would be up to the Order to feed the young man the information he would need to take action, and to support him on his missions. Yes Piandao had chosen well. This young man was not a bender but he was smart, decisive, courageous, and from his own modest account an accomplished warrior.

The old sword master had been correct, it was time for new, younger men to be brought into the Order. Dedicated young men, who would, on their own responsibility, take action for the good of all. Who would lead the White Lotus into this new world that had been created by the end of Sozin's War.

The Grand Lotus sipped his tea and thought. It would not be too early to look for a replacement for himself. This young warrior had much potential and with the right guidance and training could become the man that the Order needed, that the world needed.

The Dragon of the West smiled as he finished his cup of tea. He then pulled a blank sheet of paper from the stack and began to write new orders to the members of the society.

* * *

Katara was just heating the water for the tea when she heard the knock on the front door. _Chung Yee is early._ The water bender told herself as she hurried to answer the knock.

"I wasn't expecting you..." The fourteen year old started to say as she opened the door, but the words died in her mouth by the sight before her.

There were four people standing on the patio, three men and a woman. All had dark skin and blue eyes. All four were dressed in blue robes with white fur trim. And all four looked uncomfortably warm in their heavy clothes.

Katara almost wanted to cry. Her heart leaped in her chest to see four people of her own tribe standing there. She had been homesick before, but now, seeing people that looked like her and her brother, standing at her door made her loneliness even more intense. She just wanted to hug these strangers.

"Good morning." The youngest of the group, a handsome man in his twenties said. "I am Dai herald to the court of Chief Arnook of the Northern Water Tribe. This is the Elder Hahn..." the young man indicated and older man, who seemed to be staring at Katara's chest. "The Advisor to the Chief for Internal Affairs. And this is Woo Shi..." The herald's hand indicated the oldest of the four, an old man who was at least looking at the water bender's face, or was it her neck that he was examining? "... Advisor to the Chief for Protocol and legal affairs. We are looking for Sohkka, son of Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe."

The young man having finished his introductions looked expectantly at the young water bender, his eyes only occasionally flicking down to her chest. Katara's eyes were staring at the fourth member of the group. The thick set woman in her late twenties, to early thirties, was standing a pace or two away from the men. Her eyes were downcast as she waited patiently at the rear. To the fourteen year old it looked as though this woman was used to waiting patiently.

There was something about the woman that struck a familiar chord in the Southern girl's mind. All four looked familiar in some way. The waterbender had probably seen them at the court of Chief Arnook during her stay in the Northern Water Tribe city all those months ago, but the woman looked especially familiar. And it wasn't just her skin and clothing, or that the woman wore her dark brown hair in the falling style traditional to the Northern tribe. Katara had her own hair up in the traditional Southern style with the small bun, long braid and hair loops of her people. It was the woman's face and manner that was familiar to the young bender.

The herald, looking up from his study of female water bender anatomy, noticed the teen was looking to the back of his group. Following her eyes he saw the fourth member of his party standing there.

The chief herald had warned him that the Southerners were strange and did not follow normal protocol so he should be open and aware. Dai prided himself on his quick thinking and adaptability, he believed, and rightly too, that this was the reason he was given this important and delicate mission.

"This is Ah Too Aat." The young man said indicating the woman at the rear. "A healer to the Royal Family."

Katara looked down to the herald and back to the woman. She noted the unhappy "Harrumph" from the Advisor on Protocol. _Typical of a Northerner!_ She told herself with an internal sneer. The name the young man had pronounced sounded strange yet familiar much like the woman herself.

"Atuat?" Katara asked using a name from the old language that was used for naming in the Southern Tribe.

The older woman looked up and smiled at the younger.

"That's how my grandmother used to say my name. I was named after my great, great grandmother." The woman said. "Yes, I am Atuat. You're Katara aren't you?"

"Yes, I am Katara, child of Kya, of the Wolf Clan of the Southern Tribe." The teen said, using the correct formula for giving one's name.

The Southern Tribe traced their line through their mothers. After all, as the old women used to laugh, you can never be sure of who the father is, but there can be no doubt as to who the mother was.

All four looked at her expectantly, waiting for something more. The fourteen year old stared back not understanding what they thought was missing.

"Betrothed of…?" The eldest finally asked.

"What?" The teen responded confused.

"Katara, betrothed of…? The son of…?" The herald prompted.

"I am not engaged to anyone." The fourteen year old told them, folding her arms across her chest in irritation.

This at least got the Elder Hahn's eyes to move up to her face.

"But the necklace you wear?" The herald asked.

"Was my grandmother's, who gave it to my mother, who then gave it to me." The young woman explained.

"Remember my lords." The woman at the back admonished the three men with a bow. "She is the granddaughter of Kanna betrothed of Pakku."

This information elicited a round of "Ahhhhs" and head nods of understanding from the three men.

"Anyway," The teen told them. "My brother is not here. He is escorting a friend home."

"Would it be possible for us to wait for him to return?" Dai asked.

"Sorry." The young bender replied. "I wasn't clear. Our friend lives in Gaoling. Sokka…" (She made a point of pronouncing her brother's name correctly) "won't be back for six months or more."

"Six months?" The herald asked in shock. "That's much too long. We need to speak to him in the next few weeks at the latest."

"Well, if he sticks to his schedule he should arrive at the Bei Fong estate in two weeks." Katara told the Northerners. "If you went by sea you should be able to get there before he arrives."

"At the Bei Fong estate?" The young man asked.

"In the city of Gaoling." The fourteen year old affirmed.

Katara stood in the doorway for a moment then let her homesickness get the better of her.

"Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?" The young girl asked the Northerners.

There were looks and nods among the three men, who ignored the woman standing in the background, then the youngest of the group turned to her and said,

"Yes, thank you. That would be very nice."

* * *

Sokka stood leaning on the railing of the ancient bridge and watched the river roar through the valley. Toph had used her bending to shoot the two of them up over the mountain and down this side into the gorge and the water tribesman had asked for a short break to walk across the Roaming bridge that spanned the river. The earthbender stood beside him impatiently waiting to be on their way.

The young man watched as the river tore down the valley, crashing over giant boulders and stones, the white spray sprinkling his face as he leaned over the railing. _Must have rained recently up in the mountains,_ he thought _judging by the amount of water in the river_. The sound of the rushing water throwing itself over the rapids and the sight of it was fascinating to the tribesman.

"Oh Toph…" The boy almost sighed. "I don't know…, can you feel the river?"

The small earthbender turned and leaned on the stone railing, her face turned towards the rapids.

"I can feel it pushing on the stones." She explained, after a time.

"I wish you could see it." The boy told her, his voice revealing his excitement at the sight before him. "I know you don't need to see, but it's just so amazing. All the power and beauty of it, the way the water roars and sings over the stones. Then there are places where it is so still you can't even see the water, just the green moss lining the pool, and the places where it is churning and swirling, and the wave of foam as it crashes over the great boulders, flying up into the air. It's just so amazing, and powerful, and magnificent. It's like you that way, so beautiful and magnificent. I wish I could give you one of my eyes just so you could see the world the way I do. I just don't have the words or the skill to tell you how wonderful you are."

The young girl had been leaning on the rail, using her bending to feel the young man's strong heart as it pounded against his ribs, the excitement in his voice echoed by the beating in his chest. She knew he spoke the truth. She knew that her friend meant every word he had just said to her. She turned her face to him, and thought of the only thing she really ever wanted to actually see in this world.

Sokka turned at the movement and looked into Toph's pale green eyes as they looked through him. He knew he would never be able to see what she saw. No matter how quickly, or how many times he turned his head to try and catch whatever was behind him that she always seemed to be looking at.

The blind girl reached out towards the young man beside her. He slid his hand to hers and the two clasped hands, their fingers intertwining. The two stood for a moment feeling the spray from the river fall on them.

"We should be going." The tribesman finally said.

"Yeah." The young girl said turning towards the far end of the bridge.

The young man walked beside the blind girl, his heart light and happy in his chest, but his mind sad and wistful. The small earthbender turned her face down stream for a time so her friend would not see the tears threatening to roll from her eyes down onto her cheeks.

* * *

Katara dug out the large tea kettle from the cupboard. They had not used it since her brother had left two weeks before. She easily filled it using her bending and set it on the stove to heat. It would take a long time. She had made only a small fire in the stove and by the time she added more charcoal and it started to burn, it would be at least a half an hour before the water was ready for tea. Then she remembered something her brother had suggested to her.

"If you can freeze water, you should be able to heat it as well." Sokka had told her once after they had been practicing. "Use the same form, just think hot instead of cold."

_Well it's worth a try._ The waterbender told herself. She took her back stance then shifting her weight onto her front foot while pushing her hands forward and blowing through her mouth she thought _Hot!_.

By the third pass she was rewarded with a small trickle of steam from the spout of the kettle. After the fourth pass the trickle was a stream and the kettle was giving off a quiet hiss.

The fourteen year old broke her stance with a smile on her lips as she shook out the tension in her hands.

"Did you just use water bending to heat that water?" A woman's voice asked.

Katara turned and saw the northern healer standing in the doorway to the kitchen, with an amazed expression on her face.

"Well… Yes." The young woman told the older one. "If you can freeze water you should be able to heat it."

The teen then turned and pulled a tray down from the cupboard and set it on the counter, but her guilt finally got the better of her and she explained,

"My brother figured it out and told me how I might be able to do it."

"Kanna's child." The healer said shaking her head.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Katara asked her hands on her hips.

"Forgive me." The older woman asked bowing to the younger one. "I forget that you and your brother really are Kanna's children, or grandchildren actually. In the north your grandmother is rather infamous. She was of a noble family, a high noble family, and was betrothed to the man who obviously would become the greatest bender of his generation, perhaps the greatest bender of this age. Yet she left the tribe, even though he truly loved her, she ran away from all she had. So now whenever there is someone who does not obey the rules, or who thinks differently, we call them one of Kanna's children."

"Oh…" Katara said thoughtfully.

"You have to admit that you and your brother have done nothing to dispel the legend." Atuat told the teenager.

"I don't understand." The younger bender replied.

"Well I mean the two of you show up with the Avatar. You behave like the typical Southerners. You're the willful, sensual woman, you have the Avatar falling all over himself to please you, who challenges Pakku to a duel, and forced him, against all custom, to teach you waterbending."

Katara raised an irate eyebrow, while crossing her arms across her chest, at the description the healer gave.

"And your brother…." The older woman went on, oblivious to the younger ones anger. "The typical virile Southern warrior, who won't let anything stand between him and the woman he loves, not custom, or rank, or law. Who makes the princess, the most beloved of any royal in my life time, fall in love with him, even though they are doomed to always be denied to each other. And Yue, so in love with him and knowing they will never be together, willingly sacrifices herself for the tribe, instead of living a life without her one true love. And he, holding her in his arms, sharing one last kiss, as she passes over into the spirit world. Young girls in the tribe still swoon when they hear the story"

The fourteen year old was about to say something but was stopped by the sight of tears glistening in the healer's eyes. The story of her brother and Yue affected not just the young girls of the tribe it would seem.

"I tell you…" The older woman went on. "…Young Lihua will be the envy of all the girls in the tribe."

"Who?" The southerner asked.

"What?" The healer asked pulled from her thoughts.

"Leewaa?" The young bender asked, trying to remember the name.

"Leewaa?" The older woman said, consternation evident on her face, followed by recognition, then perhaps embarrassment or was it fear, the teenager was not sure.

"Lihua." Atuat said after a second. "Oh... that's only an expression we use. Anyway I came in to help with the tea, so what can I do?"

Katara thought for a moment not sure if she wanted to accept the explanation, but finally relented.

"Well, since Iroh isn't here..." The young bender told the older woman. "You can get the milk out of the cool cabinet over there."

The teenager pointed to a wooden cabinet against the wall. It was oddly set up with two heavy doors in the center with a lot of blank space above and below the doors.

"Iroh?" The healer asked walking to the odd cabinet.

"Our house mate." The young woman explained, while pulling out a large porcelain tea pot from a cupboard. "He has a fit anytime I put milk in my tea, but since he's not here..."

"Kanna's child." Atuat said smiling.

The woman stared at the cabinet for a time, trying to figure out how the heave latches on the doors worked. She finally got the top door open and seeing a small pitcher of milk reached in to get it out.

"Cold!" The healer said in surprise and delight.

Katara looked up from where she had been adding loose tea to the tea pot.

"There is a block of ice in the top." The young water bender explained. "And the cold air and melt water run down inside the walls keeping the cabinet cold. Every few days I move the water from a pan in the bottom where it drains, up to the top and refreeze it. It keeps things fresh much longer."

"I wish it was big enough to crawl into." The older woman said with a smile. "Is this another of your brother's ideas?"

"Sokka is not the only smart one in our family." Katara told the woman, going back to loading the pot with tea.

"Sorry." The healer said, closing the door and placing the milk on the tray.

The teen gave up on scooping tea into the pot. She had lost count at some point and now had to dump it all back into the box and start all over.

"No… I'm sorry" The fourteen year old told her guest. "It was my brother's idea, he designed it and had it made."

"Having a brother like that must be very…" The Northerner began but was cut off by the Southerner.

"Irritating!" Katara said, dumping out the pot.

"I was going to say intimidating." Atuat finished.

"Yes that too." The young water bender agreed. "You don't know what it was like. I was the reason the war had come to the village. I was the reason the war party had left, probably never to return. He was the reason we were still alive. He was feeding all of us. His ideas kept us alive and warm."

"It must have been very hard on both of you." The healer told the teen. "The only one close to your own ages were each other. Your only playmate, your only friend, was your brother. And it must have only been getting worse as the years went by. Soon your brother would be sixteen and would need a wife and from the stories you were the only girl even close to his age. You must have felt so alone."

The young water bender set the tea pot down on the counter. The healer's words brought back a time during the first winter after the war party had left.

* * *

It was the worst winter, the winter when everything was running out.

Sokka stood in the darkness holding his harpoon in one hand, his spear in the other.

"I won't come back without a kill." The twelve year old told his sister and his grandmother.

"Good hunting." Gran Gran told the boy.

"Good hunting." His ten year old sister told him.

Then the young water bender reached up, pushing the boy's hood back, and standing on her toes she kissed him on the cheek, then pulled his hood back in place.

The young hunter smiled at his family, turned, and leaning into his harness dragged his empty sled out into the darkness.

"Gran Gran?" The little girl asked. "Why didn't Sokka take any food with him?"

"He won't need it dear." Her grandmother explained.

* * *

Katara sat beside her grandmother in the crowded igloo. The young girl had not been this warm in weeks, with all the nearly naked members of the tribe in this one hut, even if it was the largest of the village had warmed it up to the point that the inner walls were beginning to glint with melt water.

"Our supplies of meat are nearly gone." Kanna told the assembly. "You all know the reasons and there are many. My grandson has been gone over a week now, he took no supplies only his weapons and his sled."

There was quiet, as each member of the tribe realized what this meant.

"Today." The old woman, the chief of chiefs went on. "I will go out onto the ice to search for our hunter and help him bring his kill home to us."

There were quiet mummers at this statement.

"Tomorrow I will go out onto the ice and hunt." Old Tungajuaq said.

Tunga was an old man, whose legs were so bad that he could barely hobble around the village.

"And I will go onto the ice with you."

It was old Pittiulak who had spoken up, whose eyes were so burned by the sun on the snow that his little granddaughter had to lead him from hut to hut.

"It will be like the old days." Tungajuaq said, slapping his old friend on the back.

"Yes!" Pittiulak laughed. "We will hunt the great snow bears and bring back meat for all."

"But the snow bears sleep in the winter." Katara said to her grandmother.

"Quiet little one." Gran Gran replied, the little water bender was surprised to see tears in Gran Gran's eyes.

"And I will go with you husband." Old Puja said hugging Pittiulak. "And I will clean the hides and keep you warm at night.

The old man laughed and hugged his wife where they sat on the skins.

"And this old one will go with you Tungajuaq." It was Panikpak who spoke.

She was an old friend of Kanna's whose husband had died long ago.

"I may have lost my full breasts, but I can still keep an old man like you warm at night." The old woman laughed, as did the whole gathering.

Others spoke up until all the elders of the tribe had determined that tomorrow they would all go out onto the ice together.

"Tomorrow…" It was Miki who spoke then. "If Katara will watch little Sauri for me. I will go out onto the ice and go to the coast to see if the war party has returned."

She was a young mother whose husband had left with the war party all those months ago, Sauri was her son.

"If Katara will watch my Pakak I will go with you." It was another mother, young Pikatti who spoke.

"My Siku is not weaned yet, so I will take her with me as we search for the war party." Qannik told the assembly.

Soon it was decided, all the adults would leave the village the next day, leaving the children to be cared for by the young water bender.

"Let someone else stay and watch the children." Katara spoke up. "I want to go with you Gran Gran and look for Sokka."

"No little one." Kanna replied. "You must stay behind. You must be the last."

With the plans for tomorrow made the meeting broke up, each member of the tribe going back to their own igloos to prepare for the next day.

As Little Katara got ready for bed she begged her grandmother.

"Please let me go with you. I want to find Sokka."

"No! And stop asking." The chief of the tribe commanded. "You are the last water bender. You must stay behind. You must have hope and wait for your brother. He will come for you. You must save all the food for yourself. Give none to the children, it is only for you. If Sokka does not get back in three or four days, and the children are crying and cannot be comforted, you must use that knot I taught you and your brother. Do you remember it?"

"The children's knot." The ten year old said nodding.

"Yes, that one. You will need one for each of the little ones. You must slip it around their necks and pull it as tight as you can. Then you must set the children out onto the ice. You must promise me that you will do this. Do you promise?"

"Yes Gran Gran."

"Good! Then you must wait for your brother to return with his kill. Make the meat last as long as you can. Sokka loves you more than his life and he will come for you. So you must be patient and you must always have hope."

"Yes Gran Gran."

"When your brother returns, you and he will be like Tui and La, like the first brother and sister, the first hunter and the first water bender. And when you are old enough you must laugh with each other."

"Gran Gran!" The little girl said stopping the old woman. "You told us we should never laugh with each other."

"I know dear." The chief of the tribe said tucking her granddaughter in under the covers. "But that was before. Now there will only be the two of you. You must love each other. You must become the mother and Sokka the father of the tribe. Do you understand?"

"Yes Gran Gran."

"Good now go to sleep, and always know that I love you and your brother very much and always will."

Kanna kissed the young girl on the forehead, and watched as her granddaughter slowly went to sleep. Then the old woman got up and crawled out of the igloo and walked out into the winter's darkness. As the elder, as the chief she had to set the example for the rest of the tribe to follow.

XXX

Sokka woke up when his face hit the snow. He cursed himself with the few inadequate words he had for the purpose. This was the second time he had fallen asleep on his feet. It had been four days since he had found the air hole in the ice, he had waited for hours until the tiger seal had come back to breath and he was able to harpoon it. Then another hour and a half, pulling it in and playing it out until the seal was so tired that he was able to kill it with his spear. Then more hours of chopping ice to make the hole big enough to haul the seal onto the snow.

That had taken all of the young boy's ingenuity. The seal weighed four times as much as he did. Then he had to get the carcass onto the sled, which with the young boy's skill with ropes and levers was not all that difficult just time consuming.

Now he had been walking for three days with only small snatches of sleep along the way. His strength was what was needed now. His mind could guide him by the stars but only his muscles could haul the heavy sled. He had little snow shoes for the base of his spear and harpoon so he could use them as poles to help him pull the sled, but it was still up to his legs and back to move the needed food across the barren snow and ice.

The seal was heavy with blubber and meat. If they were careful it would last the tribe until the sun rose again. With the sun would come more game and better hunting, but first he had to get his kill back to the village.

_One more step!_ The boy told himself. _Just one more step! And then one more, and one more!_ The hunter had been telling himself that for hours.

Sokka pulled what was left of the seal's liver out from under his parka. He stored it next to his skin to keep it soft and edible. He bit into it cutting off the chunk using his knife and chewed. His teeth worked the blood out of the meat and he swallowed it down. Then the meat itself. He gave it a few seconds to rest in his stomach to give him the energy he would need. Then he got clumsily to his feet, the snow shoes he wore making the task even harder. The young man picked up his poles and straining against the harness, he began hauling the sled over the snow.

_One more step! _He told himself.

XXX

_Getting close!_ The hunter told himself. He was beginning to recognize land marks, what there were of them on the ice plain. But he knew the stars and he knew the ice. He was getting close. He couldn't trust everything his eyes told him by this point. Distances were all confused, what was close seemed far away, and some of the things he saw turned out to not exist at all.

Sokka saw something up ahead on the ice. In the dim light of the stars he couldn't be sure what it was, all he saw was a dark shape on the ice. Maybe another hallucination. _One more step!_

As he got closer he expected it to change, become a shadow or a snow mound or something but it did not, well not in that way. It did resolve itself into a heavy blue parka. It was someone sitting on the ice. _But that's impossible,_ he told himself. No one would just be sitting on the ice, they would freeze to death in just hours.

That's when Sokka became frightened. _What if it's a spirit?_ He asked himself. _Come to take me to the spirit world._ That would be so unfair after he had nearly reached the village. _Go around it._ He advised himself. He would give it a wide berth and avoid it entirely. _One more step!_

XXX

The young girl lay in her bed dreaming. She heard her brother calling her name.

It was warm in the dream. The summer sun made the walls of the igloo glow with light and the two of them were naked in the warmth, playing. Sokka was calling her as she tried to get away from him. He was tickling her and making her feel all funny inside, and it scared her.

"Katara I need you." Her brother told her, as she knelt on the bed on the other side of the igloo from him.

"Please sis, I need you." He called again.

The girl laughed. She always thought her brother looked funny naked. Boys were just funny looking not like girls.

"Please sis, please!" He called to her.

She could tell that he really did need her. His voice was getting desperate, but it seemed so far away. She got up off of the bed and walked over to him.

"What's wrong Sokka?" The young girl asked him.

"Please Tara, I need your help!" He told her.

She almost cried, he looked so sad. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard.

"If you love me sis, please help me!" Her brother begged, it sounded so far away.

Katara looked up into her brothers eyes, he looked down into hers.

"I do love you Sokka." She told him, then she brought her lips to his the way she had seen her mother kiss her father.

"Tara please! I can't do it alone." Her brother called to her.

The little girl woke at that. She realized it was a dream.

"Sis I need you!" Katara heard the voice again.

It was coming from outside of the igloo. She jumped out of bed and threw on her heavy clothes shouting,

"I'm coming Sokka!"

Once the young bender was outside she saw the dark shape of her brother and his sled far away on the ice. She could hear calls and shouts from the other igloos in the village as more and more people were roused by her brother's calls and her own shouts. She ran out into the blistering cold to him.

As Katara got nearer she could see a body on the sled and Sokka in just his light under tunic trying to haul the sled across the ice. She ran up to him and threw her arms around him, her tears on his cheek, her lips on his as she kissed him.

"I found Gran Gran out on the ice nearly frozen." The boy panted, near complete collapse. "I thought she was a spirit at first, but then I recognized the hood on her parka. I need help getting her back home. I can't do it alone."

The young bender released the boy and looking back saw her grandmother as well as a tiger seal carcass lying on the sled, Sokka's parka covering the old woman.

"I should have dumped the kill but I had worked so hard to get it here I got stupid, and left it on the sled." The boy explained still straining to pull the sled along.

The young girl turned and grabbed onto the harness and helped him drag the sled farther toward the village.

Soon there were others helping, young and old. Their grandmother was pulled off the sled and into the igloo, onto the bed, and covered in furs. The meat of the seal was cut up and distributed to each of the families. Finally it was just the two of them. Katara helped her brother into the igloo, she helped him undress and the two joined their grandmother in the bed, using their own body heat to revive the old woman.

"You came back." Was all Katara could say, holding onto her brother as they lay naked under the skins.

"I said I would." Was all the boy could manage to say before he was fast asleep.

* * *

Atuat saw the quiet tears rolling down the younger woman's face, and the healer realized that she had brought up a subject, or a memory that had captured the girl's mind. A memory that should have been best left alone.

"But then you found the Avatar and rescued him." The older woman said, looking through the cupboards, ostensibly trying to find cups for the tea. "And now the war is over and everything can return to normal."

"Yes." The young bender said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "You seem to know a lot about my brother and me."

"You are interesting, different." Atuat replied. "A healer needs to know about her… about those… who are different."

Katara had heard the stops in the older woman's voice. The Northerner was about to say something that she should not have and had caught herself just in time.

The two were quiet, while Atuat pulled the cups she had found, down from the cupboard and set them on the tray, and Katara began to scoop tea into the pot again.

"I don't know where you are staying." Katara said, changing the subject. "But you could always make an icegloo to cool off in. I do it sometimes in the garden out back."

"A what?" The older woman asked.

"An icegloo." The younger explained. "An igloo made of ice."

"What's an igglue?" The healer asked.

"And we're the ones who are different." Katara said with disdain, she was starting to dislike this Northerner. "It's a small domed hut, normally made of packed snow. It's just easier to make it out of ice if you are water bending."

Katara took a bending stance and pulled the steaming water from the kettle on the stove into the tea pot on the counter.

"Oh." The older woman said, watching the younger bend the water. "I can make small amounts of ice to pack around sprains and pulls but I never learned how to make something as large as a hut. It's not really something a healer would need to know."

"Just because you're a healer doesn't mean you can't do water bending." The teen said setting the top on the tea pot.

"But water bending is just a distraction from the greater gift." The healer explained, letting her passion for the subject begin to add heat to her words. "Maybe only one in ten water benders is giving the gift of healing by Tui and La, and half of them are men who cannot become healers. So for any woman to let some other form of bending distract her from the true gift is… well almost criminal."

"So you think I am some sort of…" Katara began but was stopped by the elder.

"No! It's just that you have to admit that you're not as good a healer as you could be." Atuat explained. "I saw you in your classes in the healing huts, you had a real gift for healing, but instead you left Yugoda and became Pakku's student. So you could learn what any man can learn."

"I'm still a healer, and a water bender." The young girl defended with her own heat coloring her words.

"But even you have to admit that you are weak when it comes to being a healer." The Northerner accused.

"Yes that's true." The teen conceded. "But the war was reaching a crisis, and more than healing was needed."

"Yes, but the war is over now." The older told the younger.

"The Avatar still needs me." Katara responded.

Atuat was quiet after that, the woman turned and closed the door to the main room, and turning back, she approached the younger bender, reaching into a pouch on her belt.

"Yugoda gave me this to give to you." The healer explained pulling out a small skin bag from her pouch.

From the bag the Northerner pulled out a small, intricate blue glass phial on a chain and handed it to the teen.

"This is water from the well of the Spirit Oasis." Atuat said holding out the phial to the younger girl. "Word had reached the north that you had used the one Pakku had given you to save the Avatar's life in time of great need. This is to replace that one."

Katara recognized it immediately, it was identical to the empty phial she still wore around her neck. The young woman reached up and pulled the old pendant off and exchanged it for the now full one. The glass felt cool as she tucked it under her clothes and nestled it between her breasts.

Atuat accepted the empty phial and put it away into her pouch.

"Remember." The healer said, folding her hands over her own heart. "This is a great gift, but it is not for you, you are just a healer. This gift is for the Avatar, who is needed by the tribe. It is for you to use but only for him. His life and health are your responsibility. You are the healer to the Avatar."

"Thank you, I will remember." Katara responded, folding her own hands over the phial that now rested above her heart.

"Good." The healer said dropping her hands.

"Now." The young bender said dropping her own hands. "Let's give these stupid useless men their tea."

That got a laugh from the elder of the two, as she picked up the tray of cups.

"Kanna's child!" Atuat said ruefully.

"And proud of it." Katara replied using a towel to pick up the hot tea pot.

* * *

Aang landed outside the front door of the Gaang's house and with a tap folded up his glider. Holding the glider in one hand and a sack of heavy paper boxes in the other he let himself into the house. He was expecting Katara to be waiting for him in the main room of the house but there was no one there.

The Avatar was not surprised. He was late. The stupid council meeting had run long, there was a faction in the council that wanted to declare King Kuei as deceased and install the council as a permanent ruling body with hereditary positions.

There had been arguments against the proposed action. Aang thought that one hereditary monarch was better then twenty, especially if the twenty all wanted to rule the same kingdom. The proposal had been tabled, what ever that meant, until next week, but the discussion had run very long, which was the reason the air bender had picked up dinner at Katara's favorite restaurant.

Aang set his staff by the door and the food on the dining table. Next he checked to see if his favorite water bender was in the kitchen but the only one there was Momo looking lonely and hungry. The lemur flew from the window and landed on the Avatar's head demanding food.

"In a minute buddy. Where's Katara?"

The lemur chirped mournfully and pointed toward the garden behind the house.

Aang opened the pantry and tossed his friend a pear, which Momo grabbed with delight, and began to devour ravenously.

The air bender closed the pantry and walked out into the garden. What he saw worried him. It was an ice dome, what Katara called her icegloo. She only made them when she was upset about something.

Aang crawled into the dome and found the water bender kneeling in the center.

"Hey Tara." The boy said waving to the girl. "Sorry I'm so late, the meeting went on forever. I brought a dinner from 'The Grand Panda/Squirrel'.

"Oh hi Aang." The fourteen year old replied.

The Avatar breathed an internal sigh of relief. At least she wasn't mad at him. If she was she wouldn't be talking to him.

"Nice igloo." The boy said looking around appreciatively.

It was the wrong thing to say.

"It's not an igloo!" Katara shouted, rising onto her feet and throwing her arms out shattering the dome and spraying ice all over the garden. "An igloo is made of blocks of snow, cut by Sokka, using a knife made from a Walrus otter's tusk that he sharpens by licking it and putting a new coat of ice on it. Then I have to gather the blocks together and hand them to him while he puts them all together, and each block fits just right until the dome closes. While Gran Gran unloads the sled and hands me the skins through the opening in the roof that Sokka leaves just for that, and he finishes it with us warm and cozy inside."

By the end the teen was back on her knees and in tears. Aang hated to see Katara cry. It made him feel the most helpless fool in the world. Then he had an idea that might just work.

"Katara, we're going to be flying down to Gaoling in a couple of weeks for that party the Bei Fongs are throwing for Toph, right?

"The party that the Avatar is invited to, remember?" The water bender said. "The invitation didn't mention me."

"Yes, but it did say the Avatar and his guest." The twelve year told her. "And who else but you would I be asking to come with me. They must have known that."

"So?" The teen asked.

"Well..." The boy began. "We'll meet Sokka and Toph at the party and what if, after the party we fly down to the South Pole? We could probably talk the two of them into going with us. We'd get a chance to see your grandmother and Pakku, and your dad, the whole tribe."

"Sokka has to raise the fleet first." The girl said wiping her tears off her cheeks with the heels of her palms.

"Ok so we can help with that, and then fly south." Aang said, giving her his second best winning smile.

"I guess that could work." The water bender replied. "But what about all the meetings you'd be missing."

"That's the clever part of my plan." The boy said, using his best winning smile on her. "When we come back we bring Sokka with us, maybe Toph too and make them go to the meetings instead of us. Then the two of us will be free to have some fun."

"It would serve them right for running away like they did." The water triber said with a little grin. "Let's do it."

"Ok!" The Avatar agreed, holding out his hand to help the teen to her feet.

"Oh, talking about Sokka..." The water bender said, as the two walked hand in hand into the house. "There were some Northerners here to seem him about something."

"Northerners?" Aang asked.

"Northern water tribe." The girl explained. "Three rude and obnoxious men and one self righteous healer."

"What did they want?" The boy asked.

"They wouldn't tell me." Katara answered. "Much to important for a woman to be told."

"I thought you had changed that kind of thinking when we were up there." The airbender observed.

"Apparently not." The girl said. "Oh and we got a letter from Sokka too. Reading between the characters it sounds like they destroyed another restaurant."

"Not another one." The boy said opening the back door for the teen. "You mean like that time in the lower ring?"

"Well the way he was dancing around it in the letter." The water bended explained. "I would guess so."

"I hope they didn't get in any trouble." Aang said, shaking his head.

"Oh don't worry. I'm sure they lied their way out of everything." Katara reassured the Avatar. "It's Toph and Sokka after all."

* * *

Sokka sat alone by the camp fire. Shortly after dinner Toph had announced that she had to pee and had walked off into the dark forest. The swordsman had cleaned up the cooking gear and set out the sleeping gear, laying out his heavy cloak and the young girl's sleeping mat. He was a little worried that the one blanket might not be warm enough for the two of them.

He had checked his map when they had first set up camp for the night and saw that they were high in the mountains, thanks to Toph's bending, and the nights would be cold. They might even get snow, he could feel it in the air.

The map had also revealed that Toph's bending had saved them days of walking. They were now back on schedule, if not a little ahead of schedule.

The young man leaned back against a rock and pulled out his new drum, well used new drum, and began to tap out some of the new rhythms he had learned in the Travelers' camp. He had only been practicing for a short time when movement in the fire light caught his eye. He looked up to see his young companion approaching the camp, stepping in time to the tapping of the drum.

As Toph came into the camp her walk became a dance as she began to move around the fire. Sokka watched her, as he tapped harder, and added more beats. _She moves so beautifully!_ The young man thought as he watched her dance in the flickering light.

The young girl danced, and the young man played. Sometimes the dancer followed the sound of the drum sometimes she led the musician, the young man following her. Finally ending with the dancer standing before the drummer undulating to his slow steady beating of the drum.

Before Sokka could say anything Toph plopped down heavily beside him against the rock, laughing.

"You dance beautifully Toph." The tribesman told her.

"Yeah… right!" The girl replied sarcastically while elbowing him viciously in the ribs.

"You do." The young man told her, in a strangled voice, while putting his arm around her shoulders.

The two sat for a time just enjoying the closeness of each other.

"We should probably get some sleep." The boy finally said lifting his arm off of the girl.

Toph stood up and began to undress. Sokka stayed on the ground to pull his boots and socks off, then he began to divest himself of all his weapons. By the time he had gotten his top off his companion was down to her under tunic and shorts. The earthbender was wearing one of her new sets of under clothes, the tunic was tighter then her original one and the shorts were, well shorter, the waistband resting just above her hips and the legs ending near the top of her thighs. Sokka couldn't help but notice how the clothes emphasized the young girl's growing curviness. Then, as he was pulling his pants off, he noticed something else.

"Toph, what'd you do to your leg?" The boy asked.

"What?" The girl asked in reply, running her hands over her creamy thighs.

The boy, somewhat distracted by the sight, got his foot caught in his pant leg, and began to hop around the fire, until gravity finally won and he landed on his butt near the young girl.

"You've got a big bruise on your thigh." The tribesman said, finally freeing himself from his clothing, and tossing his leggings over by the makeshift bed.

"Bruise?" The girl asked. "Where?"

"Right here." Sokka told her, knee walking over to the earthbender and tracing the blue mark on the outside of her upper right thigh.

Toph felt a warm shiver run through her leg at the contact, which moved up into her groin, and from there up into her chest, making it difficult to breath since her heart was bouncing around so much her lungs had no room to function.

"Does this hurt?" The handsome young man asked gently probing the discolored mark.

"Noooo." The girl replied, in a breathless voice.

"Funny." The boy said, placing his hand over the bruise while bringing his other hand to gently grip the young girl's leg. "I don't remember seeing it last night, and you'd think I would have noticed something like this through those pants you were wearing."

The shiver had turned into a wonderful tingling in her leg, a maddening itch in her groin, and wild pounding in her chest.

"Yeah…" Was about all the girl was able to manage in reply.

Both the boy's warm strong hands had now encircled the girl's upper thigh, sliding gently along the fine skin on the inner side, his thumbs tracing the lines of the bruise.

"Maybe it's from all the bending you did today." The boy said, his own voice taking on some of the breathiness of the girls. "But as long as it doesn't hurt, it's probably fine."

Toph felt something warm and moist touch her thigh, then with a quiet "smack" it was gone. The tingle became a twitch, the itch became a roaring fire, and the pounding stopped entirely.

"All better!" The boy declared rising fluidly to his feet.

The hands that had been on her thigh, now found their way to her shoulder and chin.

"The one on your face is almost all gone." The boy breathed. "By tomorrow I won't even be able to see it."

There was another contact, warm, moist, gentle lips touched her cheek and then were gone.

"All better." This time it was the girl that breathed the phrase, her hands rising to take the waist of the young man beside her.

"You got it." The boy replied, his hands now resting on her shoulders. "If you want… I… you know… could… but only if you wanted."

"If you want to." The girl replied.

"No… I mean… If you don't want me to…" The boy stuttered.

"It's not like I want you to…" The girl told him, lowering her face, but keeping her hands on his waist. "Course I wouldn't want it to feel… you know… left out… or anything."

"Yeah… wouldn't want that." The boy replied.

Toph felt Sokka suddenly drop down in front of her, her hands tracing their way up his sides, as he squatted down on his heels. His hands dropped from her shoulders down onto her hips, as her hands now rested on his shoulders. She felt him lean forward and felt the contact through the cloth of her shorts as he kissed her last bruise.

"All better." He said rising to his feet again.

"Yeah… all better." The girl echoed.

"Best get to bed." The young man suggested, as he released the girl's hips.

"Yeah." The girl replied letting go of his shoulders.

Sokka turned away and moved over to the makeshift bed. He began to arrange his weapons around the ground cloth so he could have easy access at need.

Toph stood for a moment catching her breath, finally she moved over and lay down on her sleeping mat.

The young swordsman slipped under the blanket beside her a moment later, there was some jostling as he got comfortable and tucked the blanket down around the young earthbender and himself. The two ended up lying on their sides facing each other. There was some confusion about whose leg would go where, but that was eventually sorted out.

Toph ran her hands over the young man's muscular chest.

"What are these?" She asked, her short nails picking at one of the small hard lumps.

"Scabs." The young man explained. "Don't pick at them, they'll get infected."

"How'd you get them?" She wanted to know, her nail still pulling at the hard nub.

"Yesterday when we were training." The boy told her, taking her hand to stop her. "I wasn't wearing a shirt so I got tore up a little, it's no big thing, but if you pick at them they'll get infected, which is really bad. In a couple of days there will be new skin under them and then you can pick all you want."

"They just seem to be very pickable." The girl defended her actions. "Do you get them a lot?"

"Just when I train against you." He told her releasing her hands.

"Do they hurt?" She wanted to know.

"When you first get scraped up it hurts for a while." The boy explained. "But after a while the scab forms and it doesn't hurt much at all."

"Oh…" The earthbender said, picking at the scab she had found.

"Stop that!" The boy ordered.

"Sorry." The girl said pulling her hands off of the boy.

"Well good night Toph." The young man said, dropping his head and rubbing his nose against hers.

The young girl rubbed back.

"Good night." She echoed, when they had finished, and then snuggled her face into his chest, releasing a quiet sigh of contentment.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

I am very sorry that this is so very long overdue. My wife was directing a play and I was helping her with it and it took all of my free time. Also I did have some trouble with this chapter. I rewrote the winter section four times and am still not happy with it.

In my defense it is a long chapter, twice as long as my normal chapters, so I hope that is some compensation for the long delay, I just hope it is not too long.

I hope you are not too disappointed with it.

I have to thank Tomboy 26 for the line "Smart in some departments but completely lacking in others" She wrote it in a review a while back and I loved it so much I had to use it. I did so in this chapter with her kind permission.

Yes there was some Watercest, if you squint real hard. Couldn't resist.

A little Tokka fluff at the end, I figured they both deserved it.

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

Don't forget Kagey's fan art over on Deviant Art, just search for kawayui-kage on DeviantArt.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

To:

1st Unsigned; Thank you very much, hope you like the current chapter.

Nerf; Sorry this took so long.

Matt w; Sorry, thank you very much.

666th review; Thank you, glad you are enjoying it, hope you are still reading after the long delay.

Unsigned addict; Sorry it took so long and sorry for the mess.

Nvd; Thank you very much, though I have to disagree with you about Sokka becoming Zuko, at least not how I think of Zuko. I won't go into much detail here just because of time, but I would agree with a Mary Sue critique of Sokka since he is my favorite character from the show. And I do make him more serious than he is in the series just because I am better at writing a more serious character, and Capt. Boomerang is far smarter and funnier then I can ever be, so due to my limitations he is more serious, but I really don't see the Zuko aspect of it. Let's agree to disagree on this point. But thank you for the review and your high praise for the story.

KindOfBlueHeadhunters; I really am sorry this took so long, hope you are still reading.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

XX

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	43. Chapter 43

I'll Walk You Home pt 43

Chapter 14

pt. 2

Blood and Tears

* * *

Sokka woke early the next day. He felt the blanket crackle as he moved, and looking out over the campsite he saw that there had been a frost in the night.

The tribesman retreated under the blanket and snuggled against his bedmate. _Oh, stop it!_ He told himself. _If you want to get any better you have to train!_

The young man finally relented to his own nagging and crawled out of bed. He took up his two new knives and, his breath sending a small cloud of fog around his head and his feet crunching the frosty grass walked out into the open meadow to practice the moves Zoltan had taught him two days before. He liked Gia's gift. The knives felt comfortable in his hands.

Toph lay in bed for a while. The cramps were back and if anything were worse than they had been yesterday, and her breast band was much too tight. She could feel the young man practicing out in the meadow. _I should practice my bending._ The girl thought. She had not been training for over a week. After the desert, well… she just hadn't felt like it, then after fighting with Minh, it had hurt, but now her bending was back and she should work on it.

_That had been fun!_ The young girl smiled remembering the session she and Sokka had shared. _Yesterday? No the day before yesterday. That long ago?_

The blind girl threw off the blanket and sat up on her mat. _COLD!_ She put her hands on the ground, the frost burning her palms, and felt for the young man. Stupid was out there in just his loin cloth. _How can he stand it?_

The bender "watched" the boy for some little time. With no clothes to hide his movements or soften his silhouette she could feel him perfectly. It was beautiful, exciting, and… she really should get some clothes on and practice her bending.

Toph quickly dressed in her travel clothes then began to stretch out her muscles. _It __had__ been a long time._ She told herself. She started with simple easy forms then once she was warmed up she began adding more and more movements, more and more power to her forms. She began to send her bending out into the mountain, feeling its layers and different types of rock and earth that made it.

It was wonderful to have her bending back. She really should thank Stupid for fixing it for her. Not to mention that it had felt really good when he was freeing her chakra. Maybe she could ask him to do it again sometime.

* * *

After about an hour Sokka came back to the small camp and began to stir the ashes of last night's fire, adding small bits of new wood to get it started again. Soon the small kettle he carried was giving off a whiff of steam. The young earthbender feeling warm and refreshed finished her last form and joined the young man.

"Going to get some water." The boy told her, grabbing up a towel, the wok, and the water skins. "I'll make tea as soon as I get back."

"Thanks." The girl replied, taking a seat on the blanket, with her back against a rock, and warming her feet by the fire.

While her friend was away she pulled the shoulder bag that contained the food she was carrying. The bag seemed much lighter than it had been at the start of the journey yesterday. She checked the contents and felt what was missing. All of yesterday's meals had come from her bag, nothing had come from the two bags that the young tribesman was carrying.

_What a Meathead!_ The bender told herself. She was sure Sokka had done it on purpose, so her load would be lighter. Stupid always planned everything.

* * *

The water tribesman squatted down by the small stream and dipping his hands into the water splashed the extremely cold water onto his face.

_Tui and La that's cold!_ The teen realized in shock. He continued his spit bath then quickly toweled himself off. _I've gotten soft!_ He admonished himself. _I won't last a day back home._ The young man decided he had to rebuild his ability to handle the cold, all this time in the warmer climate of the Earth Kingdom and especially the Fire Nation had made him soft and weak.

* * *

Sokka returned from the stream with full water skins and the wok, also full. He shifted the now steaming kettle off of the fire and set the wok onto it, adding a little more wood. He poured two cups of tea and offered one to his companion, taking the second and sitting down next to her.

Toph let the cup warm her hands and inhaled the steam slowly rising from it to warm her nose and face.

The young bender shifted up against the young man who threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, until the two were touching side to side and the young girl's right hand was lying on the boy's bare thigh, her fingers absent mindedly stroking the warm dark skin.

"Aren't you cold?" The blind girl asked.

"Yeah." The boy replied, setting down his cup. "But I have to thicken up my blood if I'm ever going home again."

"Oh, yeah." The girl said, letting her fingers continue their exploration of the boy's thigh.

The small bender had forgotten that her friend was leaving her as soon as she got home. She didn't like to think about that, so she kept forgetting it.

"There'll be hot water soon if you want to clean up." The young man offered.

"Na, I'm good." The earthbender replied.

"Toph…" The boy said in a light hearted voice, pulling the girl tighter up against him. "… You're never good. You are always great."

"Yeah." The girl responded smiling.

The young man leaned down and kissed the bender on the head. The girl leaned in farther to the young man, resting her face on his chest as her hand moved down and grasped the inside of his thigh.

"Yeah…" The boy said quietly, almost to himself.

_Ah… Crap!_ The young man thought, as he felt the stirrings in his loin cloth.

The fifteen year old hated this. He longed for the days when Toph had just been his friend, not a girl. Let alone a gorgeous girl that he wanted to touch and kiss. Now she was a beautiful young woman that set his heart on fire and made his loin cloth too small.

The blind girl's fingers began their little circular dance on the inside of the boy's leg. She shifted up against him even more, raising her head to rest in the hollow of his shoulder, laying her right arm along his leg while her hand continued its absent minded exploration of his skin.

The boy's hand slipped down off of her shoulder onto her left arm. She lifted her arm and let his hand settle on her side, gently trapping it there as her arm came down, while snuggling her head against him.

The young girl remembered the night in the caravan with Tomas. How the young Traveler's hands had moved over her. That had been embarrassing and awkward, but this was different. This was comfortable and caring. This caused her heart to flutter and her stomach to jump about in glee. _I wonder what it would be like if he touched one of my bumps?_ The young girl asked herself. Her bumps were already feeling warm and tingly.

In small strokes, Sokka rubbed his hand up and down against the earth bender's side. Even through all the clothes she had on he could feel her ribs. He was always impressed with how solid yet how small the young girl was, she was strong muscle under all that clothing. He lowered his head and rested the side of his face against the top of the girl's head. There was more stirring in his loin cloth.

_Thank Tui and La that's she's blind!_ The fifteen year old prayed.

Toph's hand slid farther up the boy's leg to give herself a push up, as she shifted herself up the young man's chest, nuzzling her face against the tribesman's neck. She could feel his hand shift on her side, as it slid down below her ribs, his long fingers moving to her front as his palm rested on her side.

"That's because you're so bad at everything." The blind bender whispered into the boy's neck.

Sokka had let his head shift as his friend had moved. His face was now beside hers, he could feel her warm breath on his skin as she spoke. She had turned into him and his left arm was now draped across her back, which he began to scratch. He felt the girl move her left hand to his chest. He pulled his face back so that his lips were against her cheek as he responded,

"That's because you're so… hot…" The young man said. "Hot…! Hot, HOT! Really hot! HOT! OW! REALLY HOT!"

Toph felt the tribesman suddenly leap up and begin to jump around. It was so sudden a change that she fell over without his support.

"HOT! HOT! HOT!" The boy was shouting. "OW! OW! OW! Hot Tea!"

The blind girl pushed herself up off the ground. It was then that she realized that she had had her tea cup in her left hand. She had forgotten about it as she had moved her hand to her friend's chest.

"A… Sorry" She told him.

"…Hot!..." The boy replied, wiping his chest and stomach.

Sokka grabbed up the discarded towel from his earlier spit bath and turning his back on the girl began to wipe the hot liquid off. It had spilled all down his front.

"Really hot!" He said in an informational tone, as he wiped the tea off of his loin cloth, which fit just fine now.

"Sorry!" The girl said again, her embarrassment giving her voice an irritated tone.

_He must think I'm a complete idiot!_ The Twelve year old told herself. _He'll never want to sit next to me ever again!_ She felt her eyes burn with tears.

_She could have just said something!_ The fifteen year old told himself as he finished drying himself off. _She could have just said "back off asshole", or hit me, or… something, she didn't have to scald me with her fucking tea!_

The tribesman laid the towel out on a rock to dry and began to pull on his pants. _Another loin cloth ruined!_ He told himself, but he wasn't going to change now, the cloth was almost dry since the liquid was so hot, and he didn't have that many left. He would just wear his tea stained one and be a little damp today.

"There are some sweet rolls in your haversack." The boy said pulling on his robe.

"Right!" The girl said pulling the shoulder bag over and digging out the paper wrapped bundles.

Breakfast was quiet, and when Sokka offered the little bender more tea, it became down right silent.

* * *

After they finished eating, Sokka doused the fire and packed up the camp. The swordsman had a specific order and way he strapped on his weapons and packs. He did it quickly and efficiently but today Toph found it particularly irritating.

_Runs around all morning in just his underwear, how'd he like it if I spent all morning in just my wraps!_ The young girl groused to herself waiting for the boy to finish getting ready.

Early on in their travels she had offered to help the tribesman get ready, but he had told her,

"It's better if I do it myself. I know where everything goes and the way I want to carry it."

As the teen reached for one of the two food bags he carried Toph struck, grabbing the strap before he could, she pulled the bag onto her own shoulder. The weight nearly toppled her, one of Sokka's bags weighed twice as much as her full one had.

"That's one of mine." The young man told her, reaching for the bag.

"I thought they were our bags with our food in them." The girl replied, letting her irritation show in her voice. "You can carry this one."

The small bender tossed the nearly empty bag she had been carrying to the swordsman. _Don't think I can carry my own weight do you!_ The girl thought shifting the strap on her shoulder.

_Ahhh Crap!_ The boy thought. He had worked this all out when he had packed the food the other day. He had planned that they would eat from his friend's haversack and then replenish it every other night. That way she wouldn't have to carry as much and he would be balanced as he shifted food from the two sacks he was carrying. He had packed all the bags very carefully and she had just ruined it. Now he was going to be lopsided unless he destroyed the whole plan and redistributed all the food.

He knew why she was doing this. It was all because he had tried something this morning. She was getting back at him. He hadn't even tried anything really. It's not as if he had tried to touch her anywhere he shouldn't have and he definitely was not going to try and kiss her, that was not what he was thinking right before she spilled her really really hot tea all over him.

Girls were just too weird. This morning she was being all warm and cuddly and whispery and beautiful and kissable and then she tries to burn him to death, and now she has to go and ruin all his meal planning.

Toph shifted the strap on the bag again. _Thinks I can't carry a stupid bag just because I'm a girl!_ She thought as she fought to stay upright. Boys were just jerks. Here she was being all nice and sweet and he has to get all huffy and pissed off just because she was dumb and spilled a little, lukewarm tea on him, completely by accident. _Asshole!_

_Bitch!_ The young man thought, getting the last of his gear on.

"Let's get going." The boy said, trying hard for a neutral tone, but failing miserably

"Yeah!" The girl said turning her back on him and walking towards the road.

* * *

The morning was spent much as yesterday had been, Toph using her bending to shoot them up over the mountains and Sokka being terrified out of his mind, even if he was getting used to it, at least a little bit.

They ate lunch on a mountain peak along the main spine of the range.

"Just amazing!" The young man said, the view causing him to forget that he was angry with his traveling companion.

"What now?" The blind girl asked, without the visual distraction to assuage her anger.

"Oh nothing…" The boy answered.

Toph picked up a small rock and weighed it in her hand. It would be a good throwing rock.

"It's just that…" The tribesman said looking around him. "We don't get these kinds of views back home. It's really flat and white, you know."

Toph thought about the stone in her hand and how easy it would be to bounce it off the boy's head, she wouldn't even have to use her bending.

"Yeah… white…" The boy said, after a moment's thought. "Ok white is like sand I guess, all the same with only a little bit of difference that you really have to look for. So back home is a lot like a very flat desert, or… no it's like a really big dry lake bed, really flat and all the same."

The blind girl looked towards him at that, but she held onto the rock.

"You don't get to see big stretches of it like here." The boy went on becoming excited by the subject. "Here you have these really tall mountains, we don't have anything like this at home just some small pressure ridges."

The young girl began to raise her hand to throw the rock.

"That's where two sheets of ice come together." The boy explained holding his two hands out palms down with the fingers pointing towards each other. "And the wind or the current pushes them together and the ice where they meet gets pushed up…"

Sokka pushed his hands together steepling his fingers to illustrate what he was saying.

"But even a tall pressure ridge is only about four or five times taller than I am. To be up on these mountains is just amazing. Like over there…" The boy said pointing to the east. "You can see the mountains rise up to this huge one that is half covered in snow. Does your bending work like that? If you're high up like this can you feel farther?"

"I can just feel the mountain we're on and a little bit of the ones next to it." The girl explained, putting down the rock. "It's easier to feel things far away when it is flat."

"Oh." The boy replied, thoughtfully.

The two sat eating their cold lunch for a time after that. A cold wind blew up from the southern slope of the mountain. Toph pulled her arms around herself as she shivered.

"There is a lot of snow on the ground to the south." The boy said looking out over the mountains. "Interesting…"

"What?" The girl asked in cold irritation.

"Oh I was just wondering why, is all." The boy replied, turning to look at the girl. "Cold?"

"I'm fine!" The girl told him, still hugging herself.

Toph wondered if the young man would come over and sit next to her, put his arm around her, rub her back as he had done the other night. That would feel warm and wonderful.

"Here." The tribesman said digging into the large duffle he was carrying.

He held out the scarf he had bought for her at the fair. The young girl just sat with her arms around her.

"You'll feel warmer." The boy said seductively. "I'm going to wear mine."

The girl sat there turning her head to the north.

"Besides it'll be one less thing I have to carry." The boy told her.

The blind girl didn't say anything but eventually she snatched the piece of soft wool from the boy's hand and wrapped it around her neck. It felt nice against her skin and soon her neck and chest, where the majority of the ends hung, did feel warmer.

Sokka pulled his own scarf out of the duffle and put it on, then he pulled out his long black coat, and standing up, he took off his weapons belt, threw on the coat, and re-buckled the belt over it. Reaching down into the bag he pulled out the tan coat he had bought for the girl.

"Here's yours if you want it." He said holding out the coat.

"Jerk." Toph grumbled under her breath, but she stood up and took the proffered coat and pulled it on.

The young man pulled out and unrolled his wide brimmed black felt hat and, after retying his wolf tail lower on his head, pulled the hat on. He squatted down over the bag and reaching in tossed the bender her tan hat then closed up the duffle.

The blind girl caught it and after some more grumbling pulled it onto her head.

Sokka looked at his friend and smiled. She really did look adorable in her scarf which was offset by the large hat and long coat which made her look rugged, taller, and older.

"How're your feet holding up?" The boy asked.

"Fine!" The girl answered with an angry tone, she was sick of him treating her like a delicate little girl.

"OK, ok." The tribesman replied defensively.

The two pulled on their gear. Sokka was glad to note that the duffle was nearly empty and much more manageable now, he was still lop sided due to the haversacks but he would fix that tonight.

Toph was warmer now, except for her feet which were cold but nothing she couldn't handle. It took her a while to get used to the long skirts of the coat moving as she walked.

The girl earthbended them down the mountain and up and over the next one in line. By midafternoon they were back on the ancient road as it followed a rushing river down out of the mountains. The road, no longer climbing up the sides of mountains, was no longer cutting back and forth and the blind girl and the dark skinned boy found it easier to just walk the road, most of it was downhill any way.

It was definitely colder on this side of the mountain range, with large patches of snow showing through the trees, and some crossing the road itself. Sokka would comment on the various qualities of the patches, stating with authority on how recently the snow had fallen, what kind of snow fall it had been, which way the wind had been blowing when the snow had fallen, how strong the wind had been. It all seemed like nonsense to the small bender. She had a hard time feeling where the snow was, she could just feel the weight of it on the ground.

They were crossing one of the these patches, walking on the icy crust that had formed when Toph's foot broke through and her foot up to above her ankle plunged into the wet snow underneath. She was able to make it across the patch but each step was torture as she broke through the crust and her bare feet were swallowed by the icy snow underneath.

"Ok that's it." The dark skinned teen said, leading his companion to the side of the road and sitting her down on a rock.

"What?" The earthbender asked through gritted teeth.

"Toph…" The tribesman told her in his serious voice. "…your feet are red, soon they'll be blue, and then they will turn white, which is when I will have to cut them off. And I know you don't mind having your feet cut off, but I'm really not up for it. You're wearing boots from now on till we get to where it is warmer."

"I can't feel with shoes on." The girl complained.

"Learn!" The boy commanded. "And no tearing the soles off."

The blind girl growled her defiance, as the young man pulled something out of the duffle he was carrying and began to put it on the girl's foot.

"What's that?" The bender asked.

"It's a sock." The boy explained as he put it on her foot.

Toph was about to object when she noticed that she could only feel a painful throbbing in her feet. She could hardly feel her friend's hands as he put the socks on. The twelve year old had never worn socks before, she had been forced by Madam Wang to wear stockings and shoes at her home, but the stockings were made of silk and felt nothing like these "socks" that the tribesman was putting on her feet.

These socks ended just below her knee, not up at the top of her leg, and they were thick and heavy. She could feel the throbbing grow less and a wonderful warmth began to spread from inside her foot out to her skin. Maybe these sock things weren't too bad after all.

The young man began to rub her feet vigorously, which felt wonderful and restored the feeling to the cold lumps that had been at the ends of her legs. He spent a lot of time on her toes and when he was finished she wiggled them. They felt funny, and had material between them.

"The socks have individual socks for your toes." The boy explained.

She had to admit, well she didn't have to actually, and as a matter of fact she down right refused to admit, that her feet felt much better now. Then Sokka pulled something else out of the duffle and she felt him putting a new thing on her foot.

"These are Koala/Sheep skin boots." The swordsman explained as he put them on her feet. "They have the wool side in so they should be good and warm."

The boots covered all the way to the top of her calf. Once they were on, the tribesman helped the bender stand up in them. They were soft and warm but as she sent her bending out everything was dull and blurry. She could still feel the world around her but it was soft, and vague, though it was a lot better than standing there with numb feet on the cold road.

"I guess they'll be ok." The girl unhappily acknowledged. "But as soon as it warms up I'm taking them off."

"Understood." The boy agreed.

Sokka had her wiggle her toes and walk around in them for a few minutes, asking if her feet were sliding around inside them. Toph found them to be much more comfortable then the shoes Madame Wang had made her wear.

"How'd you get them to fit so well?" The blind girl finally asked.

"Well I knew you would need shoes at some point…" The young man explained. "… so one night in camp while you were off doing… whatever, I took a piece of blank paper and traced your foot prints in the ground onto it. I gave that to the boot maker and he made these based on the tracings. I also had him add a thin layer of earth between the inner and outer soles, to help your bending in them."

"Thanks." His friend told him.

_Just like the idiot to go to all that trouble for me._ Toph would never have thought of it herself.

Once the bender was used to the boots the two proceeded down the road. The boots proved their worth within the hour when the two of them had to cross another patch of snow. She was even getting used to the muffled feel for the world around her by the end of the second hour when Sokka suggested they make camp for the night.

The tribesman made a fire and they had a hot meal that night. He redistributed the food between the three haversacks and then laid out the cloak and sleeping mat and blanket, putting the coats on top to add a little more warmth. Toph asked Sokka to play his drum for her and she danced for him, practicing the movements that Mirela had taught her. The young man pronounced them,

"Very… professional."

He shifted the drum to his lap for the last part of her dance.

Soon it was dark and the two undressed for bed. Toph down to her tunic and shorts and Sokka down to his loin cloth.

"Good night." The boy said rubbing his nose against hers.

"Good night." She echoed answering the rub.

* * *

Sokka woke to another frosty morning. He hunkered down into the blanket and tried to go back to sleep but it was too late, he was awake, or at least partially awake, and he wasn't going back to sleep. He lay there just to stay warm for a little longer, letting his thoughts drift.

It was what he smelled that sent his sleep numbed brain down the path to disaster. Finally deciding that he should get up, he did what he had been doing once a month for the past two years. He kissed his sister on the head and told her,

"May Tui accept and bless your gift."

Then he crawled out of bed.

Toph, who hadn't been sleeping that well, the cramps were back and worse than ever, and her bumps hurt, and she could feel the cool dampness in her shorts, which meant she had either wet the bed last night, which would be horribly embarrassing, or worse she had had one of those dreams, which with Stupid in bed with her, would have been even more embarrassing, felt the kiss and heard the mumbled prayer and wondered, _What the fuck?_

"What?" The blind girl asked rolling onto her other side to face the tribesman.

"What?" The swordsman asked trying to put his pants on in the frosty morning air.

"What did you just say to me?" The girl asked, letting her irritation be heard in her tone.

_If Meathead was making some snarky comment…_ She told herself in her embarrassment, …_I swear I'll earthbend his ass into the river._

Sokka stood with one leg in his trousers and thought. He couldn't really remember saying anything to the young girl.

"Did I say something?" He asked more to himself than the questioner.

"You said something about Tui." The girl angrily reminded him.

"Tui?, Tui?" the boy said thoughtfully, still with only one leg in his pants, then a look of recognition flashed across his face. "I must have thought it was your time to wear your hair up."

That was it. Stupid was talking nonsense again. The blind girl sat up and felt on the frosty ground.

"Ow!" The boy shouted hopping around as the rock bounced off his chest. "What was that for?"

"What's wrong with my hair?" The girl asked picking up another stone.

"Nothing!" The tribesman said raising his hands defensively. "I'm sorry, I just thought it was your time is all."

"My time?" The girl asked angrily, raising the hand that held the rock.

_My time to wet the bed is what he means!_ She thought.

"Your moon time." The boy said pleadingly, giving up entirely on getting his pants on and preparing himself for the coming bombardment.

Toph threw the rock. Sokka dodged, stepped on his pants and fell heavily to the ground, but he had avoided the stone.

"Will you stop with the rocks please? I said I was sorry." The boy said rising to his feet again. "I thought it was your time to give your gift to Tui for her blessing is all."

The young bender stood up and using her bending pulled another rock into her hand.

_Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed._ The phrase unbidden ran through the young man's mind as the blanket fell away revealing the girl's shorts.

Toph threw the stone, and Sokka ducked under it. The young man had become something of an expert at dodging rocks in the last few months.

"Stop with the rocks." The boy commanded, since it was obvious he was in the right, the evidence was right before his eyes.

"It is your time!" The teen said pointing at the blind girl's shorts. "I was just wishing Tui's blessing on you."

The blind girl could feel where the young man was pointing. _Tui is another name for his girlfriend! _Flashed through her mind. _This is some sex thing he's making fun of. I did have one of those dreams and he's ridiculing me over it!_ Toph felt her eyes burn with tears of embarrassment as she threw the rock at him.

The young man dodged the stone and was about to say something snarky when the earthbender stomped her foot and the wisecrack became a whoop of surprise as the boy was sucked down into the earth up to his shoulders, he was only able to keep his hands up around his head as his elbows were pinned against his sides.

_Katara would get a little emotional._ The tribesman told himself. _But this is crazy!_ He was brought back to the moment by a rock bouncing off his skull.

"Ow!" The boy shouted ducking his head much too late.

"So you think this is funny do you." The young girl said raising another stone up to her hand.

"No!" The tribesman shouted holding up his hands as best he could in surrender. "I was just honoring your sacrifice is all."

Toph threw the rock and Sokka was able to protect his head, by ducking but his hand took the hit.

"OW! Fuck. That really hurts!"

"Good!" The girl shouted, drawing up another stone.

"Honoring my sacrifice!" She said scathingly while cocking her arm for another throw.

"I was!" The young man said in all sincerity. "It is a gift that only a woman can give and when she wears her hair up everyone honors her!"

Sokka was babbling but he was feeling the victim here. HE had done the right thing and was being punished for it.

"OW!" The boy shouted as the rock skipped off his head. "Stop with the rocks!"

"It's my gift to you!" The girl said, bending up another stone.

"Why are you hitting me? The boy asked. "I didn't do anything. Tui is the one that demands the sacrifice."

"What sacrifice?" The twelve year old demanded, brandishing the rock in her hand.

"BLOOD!" The young man shouted ducking his head. "When a girl becomes a woman Tui demands a gift of blood from her."

"Blood?" The girl asked in a quiet voice.

"Well obviously yeah." The boy said opening one eye to look at his tormentor.

"You mean I'm bleeding?" Toph asked, a flash of fear moving across her face.

The blind girl reached her free hand down and felt the dampness in her shorts. She held her hand up to her face and sniffed it. There was blood there as well as other smells but definitely blood. She could feel something wet drip down her leg. _Oma and Shu!_ The twelve year old thought. _I'm bleeding!_

Toph was scared. Had she done something in the night, touched herself, torn herself in her dream? This was terrible. Was she going to die? Bleed to death because she had been bad?

Sokka saw the fear in his friend's face and it suddenly occurred to him,

"Toph is this your first time?"

"What?" The girl asked, being pulled from her thoughts.

"Toph this is normal." The boy told her. "It happens every moon cycle. When a girl becomes a woman she gives a gift of blood to Tui and Tui blesses her and makes her fertile for the rest of that moon."

"Normal?" The blind girl demanded. "Bleeding is normal?"

"Well… yeah." The tribesman told her.

Sokka had no problem with blood. He had been butchering animals since he was four years old, three and a half actually, and had been killing them only a few years later. He had been cut, stabbed, bitten, had his nose broken, so the sight of his own blood held no emotional value other than to inform him that he had hurt himself again.

Toph had lived her life almost completely free of blood. She had skinned her knee once and gotten blood on her silk pants which had caused Madame Wang to go crazy and the blind girl had to wear a heavy bandage for a week and poor girl had suffered ten strokes as punishment. So to be told that she was bleeding, and from a part of her body that she was not allowed to touch except when absolutely necessary, and that the bleeding was tied to sex in some way had the twelve year old in complete shock.

"Am I gonna die?" She asked her companion.

"No! No!" The boy reassured her. "It only last for three or four days then you don't bleed again until the next moon."

"The next moon?" She asked him. "So I'm going to be bleeding like this for the rest of my life?"

"Well, yeah." The boy explained. "Until you get old like Gran Gran, I can't remember her ever wearing her hair up. OW! What was that for?"

"Why are you talking about how I wear my hair?" The girl angrily demanded.

Here she was bleeding and Stupid was talking about hair styles.

"Sorry, Sorry." The boy held up his hands as best he could. "Katara told me that was something we just do in the South. Back home when a woman is giving her gift to Tui she wears her hair up so everyone will know. You're supposed to ask Tui's blessing for her and give her a kiss on the cheek or on her head as a sign of blessing. I thought all women did that, which explained a lot since every time we ran into Azula she always had her hair up. I mean if you were always giving your gift to Tui you'd be pretty upset all the time. And Mai was like half up and half down and Ty Lee was always down which made sense considering their personalities. But then Katara told me it was just a hair style for everyone else which totally destroyed my theory."

"I always wore my hair up." The young girl said suspiciously.

"Oh yeah, that's true, I didn't think about that." The young man said.

Toph was unable to see how shifty eyed her friend was as he said it. But through her bending she could feel his heart skipping around in his chest.

"The first time Katara wore her hair up it was a big deal." The boy went on trying to calm his friend. "All the women came around and blessed her and gave her little gifts and such, welcoming her into being a woman. I guess in the old days the first time a girl wore her hair up it was like a sign to the men of the tribe that she was a woman and eligible for marriage."

"Marriage?" The girl asked.

"Yeah." The boy answered.

"You mean in the Water Tribe I could be married to someone now?" The bender asked.

_Sokka and Toph are married._ A little thought sang in the young girl's mind.

"Well under the old customs yeah." The boy said after thinking about it for a few seconds. "Most girl's wait till their older but I guess you could actually get married as soon as you give your first gift to Tui."

"Married eh?" The twelve year old woman mused.

"A… Toph could you… you know?" The young man asked pointing, as best he could, to the hole he was in.

The blind girl stomped her foot and the tribesman shot out of the ground.

"Thanks." Sokka said, getting up and finishing getting his pants on. "Let me make you some Willow tea. Tara used to get cramps and stuff when she gave her gift."

"Thanks." The bender said sitting down on a rock by the fire pit.

"Oh sure…" The boy said while getting the fire going. "Sis gets those bruises on her leg like you have right before she gives her gift too."

"Great!" The blind girl sarcastically stated. "Every month I'm going to be in pain, bruised and bleeding just because I'm a girl. So do boys go through all this too?"

"No… "The boy told her putting the kettle on to heat. "Gran Gran said that's why boys do stupid things like ice dodging and stuff. Since they don't have a definite physical change like girls do, boys have to do something stupid to prove that they are men. Where girls know when they become women."

"We're so lucky." The twelve year old exclaimed.

"Tell you what." The dark skinned teen said while moving around behind the girl and rubbing her shoulders. "After you have your tea, I'll heat some water so you can wash up and then you can give me your underwear and I wash it for you. And I'll cut up a towel so you can put it in your loin cloth to soak up the blood. And if you want we can just stay here for the day and you can take it easy."

"Thanks." Toph said, letting the back rub relax her a little.

Once the water was hot enough Sokka grated some willow bark into the tea in the cup and added the water.

"Let that steep a second." The boy told the girl.

The young tribesman began to root around in one of his bags and pulled out something and came over to his friend.

"I picked this up a while ago but this seems like a good time to give to you." He told her, holding out a small stone.

Toph took the stone from him and ran her hands over it. One side was smooth like an egg but the other side was a fossil of a curling shell like a snail.

"I thought it felt interesting." The young man explained. "I found it back in the Serpent's Pass, and thought you might like it."

"I do." The bender replied, running her fingers over the stone.

Toph felt Sokka's fingers gently touch her jaw turning her face towards him. She felt him bend down, and felt the gentle kiss on her cheek. She felt his forehead touch hers as he prayed,

"May Tui bless your sacrifice."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Well here is the next chapter. Toph has become a woman in the eyes of the Southern Water Tribe and maybe in Sokka's as well. The custom of women wearing their hair up was real for the Arctic peoples of Greenland. I read it in a book and couldn't pass it up. The rest is made up by me. I hope I got a little close to the truth (I really am a fat old man and don't know that much about the 'Moon Cycle')

This chapter was only about half as long as the last one, but I hope it was enjoyable.

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

Don't forget Kagey's fan art over on Deviant Art, just search for kawayui-kage on DeviantArt.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

To:

KindOfBlueHeadhunters; Thanks glad you enjoyed it.

Kat; Glad that you got some good stuff in that last chapter.

czr; Thank you for such a generous review, of course now that you have an account you won't get these any more, I'll write to you directly.

SamanthaPaige; Wow! Thank you very much you said exactly what every writer wants to hear, at least what this writer wants to hear.

700th Review; Thanks I intend to.

Sange; Thank you, happily that aspect of the artic culture is hopefully gone for good.

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	44. Chapter 44

I'll Walk You Home pt. 44

Chapter 15

pt. 1

Snow Fall

* * *

Toph knelt in her earthtent, her fingers stroking the jade coin at her throat, and inhaled deeply. _Time to get started_, she told herself. She had washed herself, and changed her underwear, adding the strips of towel, that Sokka had given her, to her loin cloth. It made her feel uncomfortable to have the extra material down there but she knew it was necessary. Her body had betrayed her one more time.

The blind woman was not going to let this latest failure of her physical self, stop her or change her. Meathead had offered to just stay in camp today, but no, she had insisted that she was fine, although the cramps were worse than ever, and that the two of them should continue on their journey. The willow tea had helped and the washing and clean clothes had also made her feel better.

The bender dropped the earthtent back into the ground. The young swordsman stood up when he felt the trembling in the earth. She could feel him looking at her as she stood up, pulling her bags and packs on.

"Boots." The young man said, pointing to her feet.

Grumbling the entire time the young woman pulled the shoes on, nearly toppling over at one point, but she managed to get them both on. She felt the world go away and become a fuzzy, indistinct blob around her. She hated shoes.

The swordsman pulled on his back pack and shoulder bags as the blind bender walked gingerly over to him.

"Your hair looks nice." The tribesman said.

Toph had her hair up in her bun, held in place by her head band. She punched him viciously in his upper arm, even as a small smile crept onto her face.

Sokka rubbed the spot, that was going to bruise, but at least he got a reaction from his friend. He reached down and took her hand in his, she interlaced her fingers with his as he led her out to the ancient highway, and the two of them continued on their journey.

* * *

They had gotten a late start that morning and stopped for lunch only a couple of hours after setting out. Lunch was simple and came from Toph's shoulder bag. The bender did not have much of an appetite but she did eat a little.

In the late afternoon the two passed through a small village crammed between the river and the road. The village was only a small inn and a few houses. Talking to the proprietor of the inn Sokka found out that people from the low lands to the south would come up into the mountains in the summer to fish in the rivers and lakes.

The young man suggested to the young woman that they could stay in the inn that night, but Toph preferred to keep on the road and camp that night. She was feeling, well dirty and smelly and really was not comfortable with the idea of staying with a bunch of strangers, who might see her bloody underwear when Meathead washed it, and where she might make a mess on the sheets. It was bad enough having to share her "gift to Tui" with her friend.

About an hour or so after the village Sokka found a good spot and the two young people set up camp. They had not covered a lot of ground that day but Toph felt better just for having gotten back on the road.

The swordsman made her some more willow tea and then cooked dinner. The earthbender erected an earthtent, so she could wash up again and change her loin cloth. The extra pieces of cloth had contained the blood so her shorts were still clean. The young man took the soiled clothes and pieces of towel and washed them, laying them out on rocks to dry.

The two ate a light dinner, and afterward just sat across the fire from one another. The blind girl wasn't sure if she should share the bed with her friend. She felt dirty and smelly and was afraid he wouldn't want to be near her, let alone share a bed with her.

"So Toph…" The young man finally broke the silence. "… is it ok if I share your tent with you?"

The young woman was a little surprised by the boy's request, but eventually she told him,

"Sure."

"Great!" The boy said, sounding very sincere. "It'll be a lot warmer in a tent. Just one thing."

_Here it comes._ The earthbender thought, he's going to want a wall down the middle between us, or something.

"Could you leave one end open?" The tribesman asked a little embarrassment coloring his request. "In case I have to get up in the night to… you know. Since I can't earthbend my way out. I'll hang my coat over that end to keep the weather out, and the heat in."

"No problem." The blind girl replied, feeling a small smile move across her face.

* * *

"Don't pick!" The tribesman commanded.

The young man and the young woman were lying on their sides facing each other. The bender was picking at one of the scabs she had found on the tribesman's chest.

"Sorry." She told him as she pulled her hands away.

The swordsman wrapped his arms around the blind woman and pulled her to him. She slid her left leg in between both of his.

"Oma!" The girl said, not realizing she was speaking aloud. "My legs are hairier than yours."

"Sorry." The boy replied, embarrassed. "I'm not real hairy."

"Oh shit!" The girl cursed. "Sorry I didn't mean to say that out loud."

"It's ok." The boy told her.

"I should shave." The girl said

"I wish I had a reason to." The boy said wistfully.

The girl's hand moved up and felt along the boy's jaw and face.

"You've got a little something there." She told him.

"Yeah but not enough to shave." The boy complained. "I look like a ten year old."

"I like how you look." The girl said, her hand still tracing his face.

_Shit! Did I just say that?_ The girl thought lowering her face and hiding it in the boy's chest.

"Ha, ha!" The boy said in mock humor. "I'm sure I 'look' great to you, just like my art work."

"Ha, ha!" The girl said, in a too happy tone. "Gotcha!"

"Well good night Toph." The boy said lowering his face towards hers.

"Good night Stupid." The girl said raising her face, and rubbing her nose against his.

The two lay there, the girl folded in the boy's arms, her head against his chest. The boy lowered his face again and kissed the top of the girl's head, then snuggled up against her, his chin on her head.

It was quiet in the tent for a few minutes.

"Don't pick." The boy said.

"Sorry." The girl replied.

* * *

In the morning Toph woke to find herself alone in the earthtent. Her bending told her that Sokka was out practicing with his sword. She thought about practicing her bending but there was frost on the ground and it would burn her feet if she went out without her boots on and the cramps, which were nowhere near as bad as they had been the last couple of days, were still there, so she stayed in bed and napped until the tribesman returned and started to heat water for tea.

After breakfast, a quick wash, a change into clean underwear and more willow tea the two set off on the road again.

Around noon instead of stopping for lunch from their haversacks they continued on down the road. Sokka had spotted smoke in the distance and the hope of a hot meal cooked by someone else enticed the two to keep going.

After about an hour they came to another small village spread out on the river bank. There was just the one inn, "The Fly Catcher", according to the sign out front. The tribesman was confused by the image on the sign, since he did not see any flies, only a fish that had been hooked on a line.

The inn was built of wood and between wood floors and heavy boots Toph was truly blind which meant that Sokka had to lead her to their table in the dining room. As a matter of habit the tribesman read the menu to his friend and they both ordered.

The blind woman was pleased to note that the server expressed no desire to touch her friend, though the young waiter was very attentive to her. The young woman smiled.

The food was good, fresh fish stir fried with vegetables and rice, and the lunch pleasant, until Meathead asked how the fish had been caught. He asked just when the nice waiter, Shu was his name, was being especially attentive to the young woman.

There followed all through desert and tea afterward a long highly detailed discussion of fishing both in theory and practice. Toph thought about throwing her tea cup at her friend but Shu had been so nice she didn't want to make a mess for him to clean up.

"Toph you should see this." The Tribesman said in amazement, holding up a fish hook the waiter had brought him. "It looks just like a bug."

"I'm glad I can't." The young woman replied.

"And you use these for fishing?" The dark skinned teen asked.

"Oh yeah." Shu replied. "It's quite an art, both tying the flies and using them to fish the rivers. People from all over the south come up here for the fishing, even during the war. They would come from as far away as Gaoling just for the fishing."

"Would?" The swordsman asked.

"It's funny." The younger teen explained. "We haven't had any one come up from the south for well over a month. And now that winter is so close there won't be any until next spring. If you're really interested there's a shop next door that sells fishing gear."

"Really?" The tribesman asked.

The blind woman sighed.

* * *

Toph woke up from her nap with a crick in her neck. She had been sitting in a chair with her feet on a stool, in the fishing shop next to the inn, when she had nodded off. The shop was also made of wood with a wood floor so sleep had really been her best option. Once she was fully awake, she got up and after stretching she walked over to where she heard Meathead's voice droning on and on.

"Oh, hey Toph." The young man said as she bumped into him.

"We're leaving." The bender told him, as she grabbed his belt and started to pull him toward what she hoped was the door.

It wasn't quite that easy but eventually the two friends were back on the road heading south down the river.

"This is really amazing." The young man pronounced.

The young woman heard a swishing sound in the air over her head and through her much dulled bending could feel the boy swinging something through the air.

"It's so well made, and the way it comes apart and goes back together it's almost like a work of art." The boy observed. "And do you know why the hooks are called flies?"

"Give me a rock." The blind bender requested holding out her hand.

"Sorry." The tribesman told her in all sincerity. "It's just that fishing back home is mostly spear fishing from a kayak, so this whole river fishing thing is a revelation."

Toph walked to the side of the road and bent down searching for a stone. She could have used her bending but with the heavy boots on she wasn't sure how good a job she could have done.

"Sorry, sorry." The boy told her, disassembling the rod and putting it away.

The bender gave up her search and rejoined the tribesman on the road. She felt in the pocket of her coat and found the stone Meathead had given her the day before. She could have thrown it at the idiot but she liked it too much. After all he had given it to her. A small smile moved her lips as she ran her fingers over it. With her free hand she took the wolf tailed warrior's hand, which clasped hers with a gentle squeeze.

The two walked on in silence for a time after that.

* * *

Toph lay in her earthtent and woke up slowly. She thought that it was morning since Meathead was moving so much next to her. She didn't know what he was doing but he was doing a lot of it. The young woman felt refreshed for once. She had finally slept through the night for the first time in days. There was dampness in her loin cloth but not much, and although it took a moment or two of just lying there she eventually realized that the cramps were gone. _Thank Oma for that!_

The earthbender felt her whole body relax with the knowledge. This was the first morning for days that she had not been in pain. Sokka had told her that what she was going through was normal and natural and blah, blah, blah. But she knew that this was not normal. That she was sick and for the first time she believed she was going to get better. That within a day or two she really would be normal and the knowledge was a tremendous relief to the small woman.

Toph sighed with relief and tried to go back to sleep but the tribesman's elbow chose that moment to land in between her shoulder blades and nearly role her onto her stomach.

"Sorry." The dark skinned teen apologized.

"What are you doing?" The girl asked shoving back at the boy.

"Getting dressed." The boy explained. "And there is not a lot of room in here."

The small bender did not understand. Meathead usually trained and spent most of the morning in just his loin cloth. Now he was getting dressed in the tent on the one morning that she was feeling better and would have liked to have lain peacefully napping.

"Do it outside!" She told him, elbowing him in the side.

"I can't." He told her, rolling onto his side and placing his hand on her hip. "It's snowing."

Toph felt Sokka squeeze her hip and then he kissed the back of her head, and with a laugh the hand was gone and the teen was crawling out of the earthtent taking his coat which was closing the open end. The young woman rolled onto her back, feeling the cold air move into the now open tent. She heard the swordsman give out his high pitched cry of celebration, the one that sounded like a hawk.

The twelve year old pulled her knees up to rest her feet flat on the sleeping mat. Sending out her bending she felt the fifteen year old running around the camp site, his arms spread as he twirled.

Meathead felt funny, well the world felt funny. She couldn't sense the snow but she could feel the weight of it on the ground and it felt as if her friend was walking on the air. She could feel his weight but his feet were not touching the ground.

Sokka ran through the snow letting it fall on him. These were big fluffy flakes, not the kind that fell back home, and there was no wind so they just fell beautifully from the sky. It seemed like forever since he had seen it snow and this was such a lovely sight, to see the world covered in white again, that he was reminded of home and he reveled in the feeling. The snow must have started in the night since it was already at least two fists deep on the ground.

He stopped and leaned back looking up into the white sky seeing the flakes falling down on him. He listened and could hear the quiet sound of the flakes falling all around him. He felt the cold flakes land and melt on his upturned face, blinking whenever one landed near his eye. He stuck his tongue out.

"Meathead, what are you doing?" The small bender called from the tent.

"Mmm prin poo ghaght a snoh plake ahnn my fongg." He explained.

"What?" The young woman demanded.

The young man raised his head and turning to the tent explained,

"I'm trying to catch a snow flake on my tongue. It is an ancient and mystical art practiced by the water tribes from time immemorial."

The teen then leaned back and stuck his tongue out again.

"You're crazy!" The young woman informed him.

"Yes!" The tribesman shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

There followed a series of celebratory cries as the young man danced, in that odd fashion he and his sister used, around the dead camp fire.

Toph, through her bending, felt the Idiot run to a clear section of the camp and drop down on his back swinging his arms and legs in wide arcs. Then she felt him climb back to his feet and turn and admire his work.

"This is great!" The teen exclaimed. "It's just like summer! You should put your boots on and come out of the tent."

"It's freezing!" The blind girl told him.

"Back home it's always freezing." The tribesman explained. "But it only gets warm enough to snow in the summer."

"Warm enough to snow?" The young woman asked incredulously.

"In the winter it's too cold to snow." The boy explained, shaking the snow out of his hair which was loose. "When it gets to be about forty below it's much too cold to snow. So this is really nice weather."

"Forty below freezing?" The bender demanded.

"Yeah." Sokka affirmed, then he spit into the air in front of him. "You can tell when it's forty below because your spit will freeze before it hits the ground."

"What?" The small woman demanded.

"What?" The boy asked in reply. "Well maybe not yours since you're shorter than I am but I bet it would."

"Why do you live there?" Misty Green wanted to know.

"Because its home." Sokka said as if he didn't understand the question.

Toph had no reply to that. The tribesman waited for a moment then he bent down and began to pull together a small ball of snow. Soon he was rolling it over the clearing.

"What are you doing now?" The girl asked.

"Building a fort!" The boy declared with joy and bravado.

The young bender sighed and prayed to Oma for strength. She finally decided she might as well get up. With Stupid out there building forts and such she really wasn't going to be getting any more sleep.

The young woman began to crawl out the open end of the earthtent. She could have just dropped it but then all their stuff would have been covered with snow so she left the tent up. As soon as her hand hit the snow she was glad she had. The snow was deep, almost half way up her forearm, and cold, very cold. She pulled her hand back but the perverse stuff clung to her hand and arm and she had to shake it violently to get most of it off. What was left soon melted and now she had a cold wet hand.

The blind girl searched in the tent for her boots. She was not going to go barefoot in that horrible stuff. It took her some minutes to get ready. First she had to find the boots, then she had to figure out which boot went on which foot, which took some time. She did not bother with the socks Meathead had given her. The boots were warm and furry inside and really didn't need the socks to be comfortable. She didn't bother to dress, still in her under tunic and shorts, but she did pull her long coat out of the tent with her and quickly pulled it on as she stood up.

Toph could feel the few flakes that landed on her face. She could hear the sound of the nearby river as it ran down through the canyon, and under it all she could hear the faint hiss of the snow as it fell and landed.

The boots and snow destroyed any sense of the world the small bender had, turning everything into one huge indistinct blob. One part of the blob was moving and she figured it must be her friend. She turned toward the Sokka blob.

The teen tribesman was standing in the open area of the camp site looking at the beginnings of his snow fort. It wasn't very impressive. There really wouldn't be enough snow here to make a decent fort. He looked up to see the young earthbender standing by her earthtent.

Sokka's jaw went slack as he looked at Toph. She was in her tight under tunic, which had ridden up as she had crawled out of the tent, exposing the creamy skin of her stomach, accented with the glint of gold from the chain hanging from her naval. Her shorts clung to the swell of her hips and showed her white legs, her calves and feet covered in the tan boots, her skin contrasting with the lining of the tan coat she had on. Her lips, bright red from the cold, were slightly open letting the fog of her breath escape from between them. Her pale green eyes, under her black eyebrows, were shinning out from her face, which was as white as the snow around her, visible only because it was surrounded by the black water fall of her night dark hair, decorated now with small stars of snow. It was this contrast of covered yet undressed that made her appear to be impossibly feminine and beautiful to the teen ager.

_I wish I could build an igloo, _the young man thought. But he knew this was the wrong kind of snow, and there was nowhere near enough of it. _If I had an igloo it would be like back home, and Toph and I could get in and lie on the bed surrounded by furs, naked and warm and… I really have to stop thinking about that._ The teen shook his head to clear his mind. But it was too late.

An evil little thought, completely unrelated to what he had just been thinking about, but evil none the less, had just woken in the back of the teenage boy's mind. The little thought was from when the young man had been seven years old and the evil thought had been hibernating in the back of his brain all this time. The seven year old stood up in the back of the fifteen year old's mind rubbing his hands in anticipation.

* * *

The blind woman stood by the tent, one hand was resting on the edge of the earthbent structure when she felt the impact on her back. It was surprise that caused her to squawk in protest. The missile had not hurt, though it had sprayed her with icy bits of snow. She spun towards the Sokka blob, fury in her cloudy eyes.

"Snowy you jerk! Why did you do that?" The Sokka blob was shouting at something small beside him.

The only problem was that Toph could not sense anything next to the blob that was her friend.

"I'm sorry Toph." Sokka told her, then turning back to his side he shook his finger and berated whatever was there that the blind bender could not sense, "Snowy! You swore that you would never do stuff like that ever again."

"That was about your sister." An odd little voice, that seemed to be coming from the Sokka blob's general direction, said. "I didn't promise anything about not going after your girlfriend."

"I'm not his girlfriend." The Young woman protested, raising her hand threateningly at the nothing beside her friend.

"Too bad for you Sokka, she's got nice legs." The little voice told him in an admiring tone.

"What?" Toph demanded, pulling the skirts of her coat closed around her legs in embarrassment.

"So Legs, you want to become a Snow Gnome? I could arrange it." The odd voice asked.

"I'm sorry!" Her friend apologized. "Snowy is this obnoxious Snow Gnome that has a thing for pretty girls."

"Beautiful girls." Snowy clarified. "And I'm not just a Snow Gnome, Legs, I am the king of the Snow Gnomes."

"Oh yeah right!" Sokka said with scorn. "When did they make you king of anything."

"After I told them how I kicked your ass, all the Gnomes voted and made me king." The little voice said.

"You never kicked my ass!" The tribesman shouted. "I kicked your ass."

"Meathead!" The blind girl shouted. "What is going on!"

"Sorry Toph." The young man apologized again. "Snowy is a Snow Gnome. Snow Gnomes are a bunch of evil little creatures that only come out when there is fresh snow on the ground. They run around and bother people, tripping you and stealing things and throwing snow balls at you. They are invisible, and the only way to find them is to follow their tracks in the snow."

The young warrior suddenly snapped his fingers and pointing to the spot beside him said,

"But Toph sees with her feet not her eyes so she can feel you. Got you there mister king of the Snow Gnomes."

"I don't feel anything Meathead." Toph told her friend placing her hands on her hips.

"Meathead, I like that." Snowy commented. "Good one Legs!"

The blind girl grabbed her coat and closed it again.

"Wait a minute, she should be able to feel you there if you leave tracks in the snow." Sokka complained.

"It's magic stupid." The little voice filled with disdain, replied.

"I call him that too." The bender said. "Because he can be a real idiot sometimes."

"Totally!" The gnome agreed.

"Thanks for the support there Toph." Sokka said.

"So Legs, you want to come with me and be queen of the Snow Gnomes?" Snowy asked in a suggestive voice. "I'll make you a snow castle and all the Gomes will bow to you and give you presents made of snow …, snow cakes, snow cones, snow globes. You'll love it."

"Really tempting." The blind girl said. "But I don't think so."

"Too bad." The king of the Gnomes replied with a sigh. "There is only one way to repay such insolence. I'll just have to bury you in snow balls."

Toph felt something hit her shoulder splattering her face with snow.

"You little shit!" Sokka shouted and the twelve year old bender felt the blob that was her friend, begin to run around the camp ground.

That was it. The young woman couldn't stand it any longer and kicked her right boot off to get a better feel of what was going on. Unfortunately her foot landed in a pile of snow and immediately began to freeze. She pulled it out of the snow but quite a large amount of the freezing material stayed attached to her foot. She shook most of it off but her foot was numb with cold.

Toph eventually got the near numb appendage inside the tent onto the heavy cloak that they used for a ground cloth, this was better than snow but between the numbness and the cloth her bending sense was nowhere near her normal ability to feel the world around her.

The small woman found the tribesman nearby. He was squatting down and was sweeping the air around him just below waist height, with his long arms. He looked silly with his butt stuck out as he felt for the gnome. Suddenly the teen jumped up into the air with a loud squawk of surprise while grabbing onto his rear end.

"If you don't want it kicked don't stick it out like that." The gnome advised.

Toph, now that she had a better sense of the world, thought that Snowy's voice seemed to be coming from very close to where her friend was hopping around, but it could have just been her imagination.

"I'll get you, you little bastard!" Sokka cried, turning and sweeping his arms in the area that was behind him.

There was a loud squawk from her friend and the water tribesman did a face plant in a pile of snow.

"Don't learn very quickly, do you?" The gnome noted, when the boy had gotten his head out of the snow.

"That hurt!" The young man said rubbing his butt, as he lay in the snow.

This was too good. Toph kicked off her other boot and stuck both feet under the cloak to have direct contact with her element. She sent a wave of bending out, while still holding onto the walls of the tent with her hands. The snow was still a problem but for the most part she had an excellent feel for what was going on. The only strange thing was that Sokka seemed to be floating slightly above the ground.

The teen, still lying on the ground, rolled onto his side, tucking his left arm under him, and moving his legs as if he were running, began to spin in a circle on top of the snow.

"What! Heyyy!" Snowy shouted as he was knocked off his feet.

Sokka jumped up and pounced on the prostrate gnome. There followed what could only be described as a titanic struggle, a battle between two opposing forces of the universe. One good, represented by the snow covered, wet, bedraggled tribesman, and one evil, represented by the invisible, some might say non-existent, self-styled king of the Snow Gnomes.

Toph took it all in. the terrible moment when Sokka was kicked in the groin, the poor teen was literally lifted off his feet, causing the tribesman to speak in a high pitched squeaky voice. There was the frightening scene when the personification of evil had the teen warrior by the hair and dragged him through every large pile of snow, and finally cast him into a large stone eliciting a loud "OOF" from the teen. Then there were the times that the archetype of evil kept tripping the young man, causing him to face plant into what piles of snow were left in the camp site. And last of all there were the horrifying minutes, when Snowy had the young teen by the throat, and was choking the life from him.

Fortunately for the universe Sokka, the ever resourceful, used a clever stratagem, using his long arms the tribesman was able to tap his invisible opponent on the back, distracting the gnome, and allowing good to triumph as the teen got the evil, unseen, rotten, little gnome into a head lock.

"Got you! You evil son of a snow gnome!" The warrior crowed as he held the struggling invisible creature.

_He is such an idiot!_ The blind woman thought, a large smile covering her face. She had missed some of the epic quality of the fight being unable to sense all the clouds of snow that had been thrown up, but she had loved all the sounds of the battle.

"Bastard!" From Good.

"Moron!" From Evil.

"Jerk!" From the warrior.

"Idiot!" From the gnome.

Then there had been all the,

"OOFS!" and "OWS!" and the "NOT THE HAIR!" and her favorite of all was the high pitched, breathless, "that really hurt." As the tribesman clutched his groin and fell over.

"Swear, by snow and ice, and sea and moon." The fighter for good was saying as he held the unseen Evil. "That you will always protect and serve Toph, friend to Sokka, and you will never bother her ever again."

"I swear!" Snowy said begrudgingly. "Legs you don't know what you are missing."

"None of that!" Sokka said, shaking the gnome.

"What?" The king asked, hurt by the accusation in the teens voice. "She's got nice legs."

"So…" The boy said, still with a head lock on his opponent. "Who kicked whose butt."

"I kicked yours, more than once." Snowy told him, the smirk evident in his odd little voice.

"Oh yeah?" The teen said releasing the gnome and kicking out violently.

The kick, meeting no resistance, caused the young man to over balance and fall over backwards onto the snow.

"Missed me!" The king of the gnomes crowed, his voice growing fainter as he ran off. "I'll See you later, but you won't see me."

The tribesman, completely covered in snow, slowly got to his feet and walked over to his friend who was standing at the opening to the tent.

"Well, pretty good, if I do say so myself." The young man said, puffing out his chest in pride.

"My hero?" The blind woman exclaimed, though the way she said it, it was less a declaration and more of a complaint to the universe as if asking 'is this the best champion you can find for me?'.

Sokka's chest sunk and his face fell when he heard his friend's tone. Toph reached up and grabbing the collar of the boy's coat she pulled his face down towards hers as she told him,

"You saved me."

Then the bender kissed him on his cold wet cheek, while snow fell from his loose hair onto her forehead.

The young man just froze for a second looking into the young woman's face. Then she shoved him, causing him to lose his balance and land on his butt in the snow.

"That doesn't mean I like you." The girl told him, trying to hide her smile.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Well very late chapter and not all that long. I am really sorry about that, please forgive me.

I had a lot of trouble with this chapter, but you've heard that from me about almost every chapter so that is no excuse. I am trying to stretch myself as a writer and as a story teller, and sometimes I have a hard time getting the words down. I just hope you are not disappointed.

Forty below; Forty below zero is the one place that the Celsius and the Fahrenheit temperature scales meet. It is really cold, and when you spit it really does freeze into ice before it hits the ground.

Snowy, King of the Snow Gnomes; Snowy first began to harass Katara when she was a little girl and it was discovered that she was a water bender. More about Katara and Snowy's adventures will come out in a later chapter.

More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt both Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

XXX

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

XXXX

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

To: Btch; Sorry there is only one Sokka and Toph has him, unless you want to challenge her?

To Matt; Now you know how I feel about reviews. :)

To: Mat; Glad you liked it.

To: Sonny; Well maybe we might see what is happening on Kyoshi with Suki and Ty Lee in a couple of chapters.

To: Retronoggin; Here it is sorry it took so long to get up.

To Grapes; Once again sorry this took so long. I hope you are not disappointed.

To: Alecrob; See above. Thank you very much for reading and wanting MOAR!

xx

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	45. Chapter 45

I'll Walk You Home pt. 45

Chapter 15

pt. 2

Chosen

* * *

Toph was waiting impatiently in her earthtent for Meathead to finish whatever he was building.

Somehow the water tribesman had gotten a fire going, something to do with a pine bough and sticks over the fire to protect it from the falling snow. The blind bender didn't understand or care what he had done, she was just grateful for the hot water he had supplied, so she could give herself a quick wash.

She had bathed more in the last three days than she had in the last three months, and she was getting tired of it, but it still made her feel better. She had finished a while ago, had gotten dressed, even putting on her socks which was something of an ordeal, and had even packed up all her things, and Stupid was still not ready to leave.

"Ok, you can come out now." Sokka called from outside.

The bender pulled her boots on, she had waited till the last minute before losing all sense of the world around her, and using her hands, dropped her tent back into the earth.

The snow was still falling, and it was cold, so after she got to her feet she put on her large hat and pulled the scarf tighter around her neck. She felt Meathead's hand take hers, and was surprised to feel how cold and wet his hand was. Sokka's hands were always warm to the touch. He must have been working in the snow for the entire time for his hand to be so cold.

The young woman did all right in the area around the camp, where her friend had tramped down the snow, but as he led her towards the ancient road the snow became deeper and walking was much more difficult. Her friend had to support her or she would have pitched face first into the icy stuff.

The problem was that she could not sense the snow at all and with each step her foot would sink in half way up her calf and to move forward she had to pull her back foot out high enough to take the next step. It was a slow miserable trip punctuated by the crunch of snow under both their feet.

"Ok, sit down here." The young man instructed, helping the blind woman to sit in the contraption he had made for her.

"What's this?" The bender asked settling herself.

"I built a small sled so you won't have to walk in the snow." He explained.

Sokka had used the heavy rain cloak that he had been using for a ground cloth, as a base for his friend to sit on in the sled. He now wrapped the blanket around her and then used the rest of the cloak to cover that. The small woman became a covered bump on the small sled.

"Hang on to this." The tribesman told his friend, handing her a loop of rope. "Wait, where are your mittens?"

"There in my pockets." The young woman complained, pulling them out.

"It's going to be cold just sitting there so you need to bundle up." The young man explained helping her put the mittens on.

Once the tribesman was satisfied that his friend would be safe and warm on the sled he moved to the front, put on his sand shoes, they were smaller and heavier than snow shoes, but they should work, just not as well, and tied the traces he had made around his waist.

"Hang on." The teen commanded as he began to pull the sled.

Toph felt the sled jerk under her and she held onto the rope her friend had given her to stay on. Soon the young man had the sled going at a reasonable clip through the snow.

Sokka used the shuffling jog that his people always used. The sled was inefficient, the runners sticky. Normally he would have covered the runners with a layer of ice, by urinating on them, but it was too warm to get a good slick sheen of ice on them so the sled dragged more than it should through the snow.

The tribesman also had to adjust his gate since he was using the sand shoes. While narrower than his snow shoes, they sunk farther into the wet snow and he had to lift his toes higher as he jogged. It took him some time to adjust from the years of moving in snow shoes on dry snow.

Soon he had to open his coat to help him cool down, and his breath was coming out in great gusts of fog as he pulled the sled along in his steady pace.

Toph was bored and cold. She couldn't use her bending to feel anything. She could feel the cold snow falling onto her face as she was dragged along. She pulled her hat down and her scarf up to cover more of her face.

_You are such and idiot!_ Sokka told himself as he jogged along. _The poor kid wouldn't last five minutes back home. "Toph I love you! Come with me to a place where you won't have any earth to bend and you'll be a helpless blind girl, that won't even be able to walk anywhere, but don't worry because you'll freeze to death long before you get too bored." _

The image of the blind woman sitting cold and alone in an igloo, scrapping skins and chewing mukluks flashed through the teens mind. He realized his friend, with her blindness and her upbringing wouldn't last even one minute back home.

* * *

Toph sat on the surging sled and thought. She really couldn't do much else. Mostly she was thinking about Meathead. He was so amazing, so smart, so strong, so caring, and she was so useless. He lived in the worst place in the world. A place where spit froze before it hit the ground, a place where she was less than useless, a place where he had to haul her around like so much baggage since she couldn't even walk right.

_Yue was water tribe._ The blind woman told herself, thinking of his first girlfriend. _She would be right up there with him, hauling everything they owned across the ice and snow. Suki was strong, a warrior, a commander, Ty Lee could take peoples bending. All his girlfriends were non benders like him. _

Toph used to think that non-benders were weak but now she knew that it was benders who were weak, and the non-benders who were strong. A little bit of snow had taken her bending away from her and she was useless, a complete burden to the tribesman.

_We could never be together._ She lamented. _He would have to give up everything if we were._ And she knew she could never ask that of him. He loved his home and family too much. It would destroy him to give it all up. She felt her eyes begin to burn with tears as she thought about the young man and his home.

_Stop it!_ The blind woman commanded. _So it will be cold. So what! So I won't be able to use my bending! Lots of people can't bend. He can't bend! That's never stopped him! It won't stop me! I'm not some helpless little blind girl! _

_What am I thinking? He doesn't like me in that way. Oh sure we're friends, best friends, but he doesn't want to live with me, spend the rest of his life with me. I'm such an idiot!_

* * *

_Bugs!_ The young man thought as he jogged along. _It will be tough to get used to all the bugs they have in the Earth Kingdom. No bugs back home. After all it's not like I'm needed by the tribe anymore. With the war party going home there will be plenty of hunters, all of them older and better than I am. Gran Gran will be glad to get rid of me, and dad never really cared about anything I did. It's not like I'm Katara. When she tells them she's not staying they will be pissed. 'Course that's if she stays with Aang, which she probably will. Yeah, Dad and Gran Gran will not be happy that the last water bender is not coming home._

_What am I thinking! Toph doesn't even like me! She would never want to live with me anywhere. I'm such an idiot, always falling in love with girls that hate me. Well Yue didn't hate me, but she really didn't get a chance to know me. Suki liked me at first but now she hates me, and can't stand to be near me. Toph always hated me, thought I was a useless non-bender, and now that she really knows me she really hates me._

_Food storage, yeah that's going to be a problem. Back home food lasts forever but up here it goes bad in just a couple of days. Maybe if you buried it, it would last longer, or you could keep it cold somehow, like the cool cupboard I built in Ba Sing Se… _ The young man's thoughts ran on like that for quite a while.

* * *

As he thought Sokka noticed that the snow had stopped falling, which was a relief. The canyon they were in was narrow and steep sided and if the snow had kept falling or the wind had picked up enough to cause the snow to drift, they might have gotten trapped. It was the reason he insisted on leaving. He wanted to be out of the canyon before they got snowed in. Now he thought they should make it out no problem.

Eventually the pass began to open up and the road and river began to descend less steeply. Because of the forest on either side of the river the tribesman was unable to see much of the country around him but he could tell that it was opening and the slope was easing. Through the tops of the trees he was able to see that the sky was clearing and that the sun was finally showing itself.

After a couple of hours the young man finally cleared the tunnel of high trees that the ancient road had become and came out into a mountain valley laid out before him. He was at the high end and the valley descended gradually before him. He came to a stop and stepped to the side reaching down to stop the sled his friend was on.

"What?" Toph asked.

"We're in a valley with a small village." The tribesman explained. "The valley is maybe four or five thousand paces long and maybe a thousand wide. There's a small village in the middle with an ancient bridge across the river and there are farms on both sides. Everything is covered in snow but I can see the low walls dividing up the fields and the farm houses."

The blind earthbender began to unwrap herself so she could get out of the improvised sled. She felt a hand on her shoulder stopping her.

"Stay in the sled and I'll take us down to the village." The tribesman told her. "We should be able to get a hot lunch in a warm room."

"The room and lunch sound fine to me." The blind woman replied. "But I'm going to walk there. This sled thing is boring."

"If you're sure?" Sokka said helping her up onto her feet.

"I'm sure!" Toph replied emphatically.

The swordsman quickly bundled the blanket and cloak up and lashed them to the top of his back pack. The young woman felt his mittened hand take hers as they began the walk down into the village. It was difficult at first. The snow was deep and wet and clung to her boots making them heavy and clumsy, but soon she had built up a rhythm and had learned how high to lift her feet and was making good progress down the road.

_I can do this!_ The blind bender told herself. _I am not a helpless little blind girl! I'll show him I can live anywhere. I'll show him!_

After a few minutes Toph felt the young man squeeze her hand.

"Hold up a minute." The tribesman said pulling his hand free from his friend's.

"What's wrong?" The twelve year old asked.

_I've done something wrong. _The bender told herself. _I'm a complete failure at this snow thing, and he's going to put me back in the sled._

"I just wanted to button up my coat." The teenager explained, pulling off his mittens and shoving them into his pockets. "Since I'm not pulling you anymore I'm getting cold."

Toph stood thinking as her friend buttoned his coat. Her right hand moved unconsciously up to the jade coin at her throat. It was buried under all her clothes and her hand was covered with her mitten but she was able to find the hard outline of it and she squeezed it. _He has to like me a little._ She thought as she held the pendant.

"Odd…" The young man said, looking at the valley before them.

"Yes you are, but I wasn't going to mention it." The young woman replied, dropping her hand to her side.

"Thanks Toph." Deep Blue replied with a smile. "You're always so thoughtful. Actually I was thinking about the valley. There are no tracks in the snow around the farms, and the only movement is down in the center of the village where the road to the bridge meets the main road. It's late in the morning, and even with the snow, people should be up and doing stuff. Also there is plenty of fire wood stacked up at the nearest farm houses but no smoke. The only smoke is coming from the four buildings at the cross roads in the village. You would think that all the houses would have fires going just for heat or at least some cooking fires going."

"Yeah I guess." The blind woman replied, not knowing what else to say.

Misty Green heard the squeak of leather and the jingle of steel from her companion.

"Just in case." The teen explained as he adjusted his packs and weapons.

"Like one of your happy little sayings." The bender replied. "Better to be ready than to be deady."

"Exactly!" The swordsman said with a low chuckle. "Toph can you bend at all in those boots?"

"I think so…" The blind woman said. "Nothing fancy. The world is pretty much a big blob right now but I should be able to do big stuff, barriers, pits, stuff like that."

"Good to know." The tribesman said taking her hand. "Well let's go get some lunch."

Toph felt Sokka's fingers take her hand. She could tell he was not wearing his mittens. _He's worried._ She thought. She began to focus her mind on her bending. _Better to be ready than to be deady._

* * *

Gupta sat by the fire in the inn drinking his warmed rum. _How can these earth people stand this cold?_ The leader of the ex-fire nation soldiers asked himself. His armor was cold to the touch and there was snow on the ground everywhere. He had not thought of all this when he and the others had deserted, now he could never go home, he would never be warm again. He took another swig of his rum, which while not as good as fire whiskey, still had a pleasant burn as it moved down his throat. _Too late to think about that now._

"Someone's coming down the road." A man in Earth Army Green said as he rushed down the stairs into the common room.

The large fire bender raised his eyes from his rum and looked up at the Earth Army deserter who had been on watch upstairs. They had picked up the non-bender in their travels. He couldn't remember the man's name, but that didn't really matter since the three Fire Army deserters all called him "Dick Head" because that seemed to be the only head the man in green armor did any thinking with.

"How many, Dick Head?" Singh asked.

The smaller deserter was sitting across the fire from his leader looking just as cold and miserable in his armor as Gupta was. Although Singh looked more water tribe than fire nation, with his dark southern islands looks, the smaller deserter was all Fire Nation and a fire bender to boot, better than Gupta was.

The two ex-soldiers had been together for years, first in the colonies then later as part of the army of occupation. When the order to retreat to the coast for transport back to the home islands had come down the two had decided to desert and set up for themselves in the back country of the earth kingdom. This village wasn't bad. They had plenty of food and drink, no sergeants to yell at them, and they had a woman, well girl really. The one supplied by the elders was only about fourteen or fifteen and they had to share her. But one was better than none, even if she was a sad little thing, and they didn't have to pay her.

"Two! A Man and a boy." The earth army deserter, whose name was Gui, told them. "They're carrying packs and are dressed funny."

"Armed?" Gupta asked.

"Couldn't tell." Gui answered.

"Go get Gopal from the other end of town and meet us in the square." The leader disgustingly ordered the incompetent clown in the conical helmet.

Dick Head rushed out the door as the two fire benders stood up and grabbed their helmets.

"A man and a boy." Singh said, smiling at his friend. "This should be fun."

"We can burn the man and sell the boy." Gupta laughed. "Fun and profit."

The two men walked toward the door still laughing.

* * *

_Earth army soldier._ Sokka thought, as from the northern end of the small village he saw a man come out of the largest building and take off running down the road to the south. _If the army is here then everything should be fine. _The young warrior had a letter of introduction from First Sergeant Lee in his shoulder bag. Lee had also told the teen that the First Sergeant had sent a letter ahead to the battalion commander at Gaoling, so the young couple should not have any problems.

"Earth Army, infantry one man running south." He quietly told his companion as they moved towards the center of the town.

"Got him." The small earth bender replied.

Toph could just sense the pounding of the man's feet as he ran. They were moving points of concussion in the greater blob that was her sense of the snow covered world. She continued to cling to her friend's hand, as she walked beside him.

The tribesman relaxed a little, the sight of the soldier in green had reassured him. He noticed faces at windows, or curtains moving. The two of them were being watched as they moved between the houses. Coming into the square formed by the road from the bridge joining the main road he could see the four main buildings of the village. All had covered porches, the roofs of the main building extending over a wooden or stone platform. On the north eastern corner was a large house, two stories. People were coming out of the building and standing on the porch.

"Building on left…" The young man explained in a low voice to his companion. "… eight no nine people, four old men and an old woman, plus a young mother, twenties with a two or three year old, and an older couple with a teenage son."

All the villagers were dressed in simple earthkingdom clothing with the addition of heavy quilted robes on top.

"Building on right…" The swordsman went on. "Smaller than the first, eleven people, older couples with some young kids, boys and girls, on a wood porch."

"I'm getting nothing from there." The blind woman replied in the same quiet voice her friend was using.

"Something's wrong." Sokka said. "Everyone looks scared and they keep looking towards the Inn."

What the young warrior assumed was the Inn was the largest of the four buildings; its porch went around two sides of the two story structure. It looked innocuous enough, with a sign hanging from an iron frame with the characters for "The Angler Inn" at the top and a fish painted below it. The only person on the large porch was a young girl maybe Katara's age or a little older. The teenage girl looked very sad and frightened, like an animal that had been beaten and not known why it was being punished. There were dark circles under her downcast eyes.

Beside the inn was a cart full of firewood that three men and a boy were unloading. The wood was old not fresh cut, as though the quartet had raided a wood pile of some other building on the other side of the river, judging by the tracks left in the snow. The four workers looked familiar to the swordsman but he couldn't place them just yet. The movement at the door to the inn ended his musings on the cart men. He saw the red armor and the lack of weapons, as the large man and the smaller one walked out onto the porch.

"Fire benders." The swordsman whispered to his companion, freeing his hand from hers. "Two of them, full armor, big guy and little guy."

The smaller man was not actually little, he was average but the larger of the two was large and made the second look small. The girl on the porch moved back against the wall, her eyes frightened and down. Big Guy, smiling, stroked her cheek as he passed by her, the girl shivered at the touch.

"I've got to get these stupid boots off." The blind bender whispered.

"Stay behind me." The tribesman answered. "I've got to get close to do any good." He added, continuing to walk into the center of the square.

Sokka pulled on the straps of his pack then he blew on his hands to warm them, before slipping them under his straps and up his sleeves, his fingers finding the grips of two of his throwing knives. He stopped in the center of the square, standing in the slushy mix of snow and water that had been churned up by the cart and the many feet that had crossed between the buildings that morning. He could feel Toph pulling lightly at his pack using it for support as she loosened the boots on her feet.

Prying the heel of her right boot against the instep of her left, Toph was able to get her foot loose. She repeated the process with the left boot. This left her with her feet still covered by the tops of the boots, essentially standing on her toes, which was uncomfortable but now she could kick both shoes off in a couple of seconds.

The swordsman's eyes flicked about the square. Everyone was looking at him, and it seemed like they had all taken a step back. _Not good!_ He said to himself.

"Howdy!" The young man called out, using his best country boy accent.

* * *

Gupta looked at the two strangers. _A man and a boy,_ he told himself. The man was taller than average and the boy might be ten or twelve. With the odd clothes the two were wearing it was difficult to judge size and age. Because of the wide brimmed hats and the scarfs he had not even had a good look at either of their faces. The man was well armed but obviously an amateur. The large deserter watched as the man actually pushed his hands under his pack straps to ease the strain on his shoulders and then had slipped them into his sleeves for warmth. The fire bender smiled, the man had essentially just tied his own hands up for the deserters.

"Fisherman." Singh quietly said to his leader.

The smaller fire bender pointed to the distinctive case lashed to the side of the stranger's ruck sack.

"Just like those others that we've been catching." Gupta agreed, noticing the case for the first time.

Over the last few weeks a small number of fishermen alone or in groups had come into the valley. Most were now prisoners, working for the deserters.

"Keep the boy as a hostage and make the father fish for us." The darker of the two ex-soldiers advised.

"Good thinking." The larger agreed just as quietly. "Where's Dick Head and Gopal?"

That's when they heard the father call out to them in greeting.

"Country boy." Singh murmured, recognizing the accent. "From near Ba Sing Se."

Gupta nodded in agreement stepping off the porch into the road walking toward the fisherman and his son.

* * *

"Here they come." Sokka whispered to his friend.

"I'm ready." The blind woman whispered back, then as an afterthought she asked, "You're really going with the dumb country boy?"

"Why not?" The Tribesman replied.

"True… You've got the dumb part down perfectly." The metalbender smirked.

The young man smiled at the snark, but then movement down the road caught his eye. He saw the Earth Kingdom soldier and another man in Fire Army armor jogging towards them up the snow covered road. _Great another fire bender!_ He told himself. He knew the Fire Army was thick with Fire Benders but this was getting dangerous, since Toph was limited in her bending.

_Odd…_ The dark skinned teen thought. The different nations had different proportions of benders. All the Air Nomads were benders, over half of the Fire Nation were benders, less than half of the Earthkingdom population were benders and in the Water Tribes less than the Earth Kingdom_. Focus!_ He shouted to himself. He was nervous, scared really, and his mind was looking for ways to avoid what he was going to have to do soon.

"Two more coming." The teen quietly told his companion. "One a firebender."

"Oh Goody!" Was her sarcastic reply.

"Here goes." The swordsman whispered

"Cold ain't it?" Sokka called to the two fire benders approaching from the inn. "We were kinda' hoping for a hot meal and a dry place to sleep tonight, if it don't cost too much."

The tribesman saw the hand signal the large bender gave to the two new arrivals. They moved off Earth Guy to Sokka's left and the fire bender to the teen's right. _Ok!_ The young man told himself. _We've got Big Guy, Little Guy, Right Guy, and Earth Guy._ The swordsman named the four men. He knew that when making a plan it was easier if your objectives had names to keep everything clear, and the young man was making a plan.

_Got to get closer._ The teen thought fingering the throwing knives inside his sleeves. _Wait!_ He ordered himself. _Let them come to you._

Sokka's eyes flicked between the four deserters. The three fire benders were in standard Fire Army infantry armor, what was called "munitions grade". Cheap, mass produced, but good for all that. The Fire Nation had had a hundred years to get it right. The tribesman knew the armor well, having fought against it and having even worn it. It was good but it had weaknesses. There were the standard openings of all plate armor, behind the knee, the groin, the crook of the elbow and the armpit.

But this armor was designed for fire benders and had to allow them to move to bend their element. This meant that there was a gap between the stomach plate and the chest plate to let them twist and breath. It also meant that the neck was open between the helmet and the shoulder armor. The face plate protected the throat and face but it restricted vision and breathing and he noted that these three like so many others had discarded the visors.

If the warrior had had Space Sword the armor would not have been a problem. He knew that the black blade would easily slice through the best armor in the world, but he wasn't sure about Spring Rain, and he knew that the steel of his throwing knives would be useless against the plates protecting the fire benders. He would have to exploit the openings he had which meant he had to be close.

"Here for the fishing?" Big Guy asked as he walked up to the two travelers.

Gupta was a large man, tall and heavily built. He used that to intimidate others, it was especially effective against those men who were taller than average but smaller then he was. He used his size now, moving up close, barely a hands breadth away from the tall "fisherman" and towering over him.

Singh stayed up with his leader adding his own presence to that of the larger man, standing just to Gupta's right, the fisherman's left.

"Fishing… Yeah that's us." Sokka answered, keeping his head down.

The teen warrior had seen the dark skin of Little Guy's face and it had thrown him for a second, but he pushed those thoughts down and stuck to his plan.

"We might be able to arrange something for you..." The large man said smiling, "And your boy."

Out of the corner of his eye Sokka saw an answering smirk on Little Guy's face. Then the smirk changed, as the tribesman felt his companion moving behind him.

"I'm not a boy!" The blind bender shouted, kicking off her boots.

The young woman's feet hit the slush of the road as she stepped out from behind her friend, and moved into her horse stance. The icy water moved through her socks and her feet started to go numb. _Fuck! That's cold!_ The sudden change took her by surprise and she was stopped for a moment.

"Earth Bender!" Little Guy shouted, stepping forward and cocking his right fist back for a fire blast.

Sokka's hands shot out from his sleeves. He felt the straps of his gear begin to slip off his shoulders. His right hand knife slid up the stomach plate of Big Guy, the tribesman's grip gentle and loose, letting the blade slide along the metal till it found the gap where the chest plate overlapped the lower one. Then, using the heel of his palm, he shoved the point into the gap, through the leather and cloth underneath into the flesh, through the diaphragm, up under the ribs and breast bone, till he could feel the pounding of the large man's heart through the steel of the knife. The teen did not see the look of surprise and shock on the large bender's face, Dark Skin of Rolling Thunder was focused on another target.

With his left hand the Black Lotus lunged towards the bender threatening Toph. The blade was aimed for the deserter's throat but Little Guy was fast and just avoided the attack. Deep Blue, having missed, tensed his grip, and angled his wrist, changing the attack into a slashing cut along the side of the fire benders neck. The sharp blade sliced through the exposed skin, down through the muscle, sinew, and tendons cutting through the carotid artery. Blood exploded from the benders neck covering the teen ager's hand and sleeve. The tribesman's left hand continued down preparing for his second strike.

Big Guy's head dropped, surprised by the sudden pain in his chest and his inability to breath.

Sokka's right hand pushed the grip of the knife in the large man's chest left and right slashing through the bottom of the bender's heart.

The tribesman's left hand drove the point of the throwing knife in that hand up into the groin of the smaller bender, guiding along the inner thigh plate of the deserter's armor.

Deep Blue felt his packs hit the ground behind him.

Dark Skin pulled the knife out of the dying man's chest and, with the easy motion of months of practice, reached for the grip of his sword.

The Black Lotus' left hand slashed through the flesh where the smaller man's leg joined his torso, cutting through the femoral artery sending another explosion of blood out onto the snow. The knife in that hand began its fall to the ground as the now empty left hand joined the right on the grip of the sword as it sang out of its scabbard, the pommel smashing the eye sock of the large bender directly in front of its wielder, sending Big Guy toppling back onto the slush of the road.

Sokka stole a glance at Toph who seemed unhurt but was just standing in the road beside and slightly behind him. Movement to his right caused him to turn his head and begin his attack on Right Guy.

Little Guy grabbed his neck desperately trying to stop the flow of his life onto the snow. His brain already starved for blood began to go numb, his legs gave way and he slowly collapsed onto the road in a growing circle of red slush.

Dark Skin saw the fireball begin to erupt from Right Guy's fist. Toph was in the direct line of the attack, the tribesman would have to dissipate the blast. Ducking his head and holding his breath The Black Lotus jumped straight into the center of the fireball. He could feel the blast of it hit him, slowing his motion through the air. He heard the hiss as the snow and melt water on his heavy coat and hat flash heated into steam. He felt the heat all around him, but the crown and wide brim of his hat protected his face and head just as the heavy material of his coat protected his body from the worst effects. His size, weight and the power of his leap broke through the center of the fireball smashing it and rendering it harmless to anyone behind him.

Sokka burst through the fireball, steam streaming off of him, towards Right Guy. The blast had robbed the tribesman of some of his momentum and he landed short, too far for the cutting attack he had planned. The swordsman lunged, pushing off with his left leg, his left arm swinging behind him for balance, his right arm extending fully from his shoulder, the point of his sword aimed at his only target, the area of his opponent's throat between the chin and breast plate.

The sharp point entered the man's neck with only the slightest resistance. With the weight and momentum of the powerful warrior behind it, it easily passed through the fire benders throat, the only real resistance was the bone of the spine, but Sokka's grip was firm yet supple and he allowed the point to find the path of least resistance between the vertebrae, severing the spinal cord, and just exiting the back of the man's neck.

The deserter opened his mouth to scream in surprise but no sound came out. Then his body, robbed of any instructions from the brain, just collapsed under him, and fell in a heap onto the road. As he felt the bender's body begin to drop the swordsman twisted his blade to free it, and turning he cut his way out of the man, slashing through the artery on the right side of the bender's neck, sending another cloud of red to stain the white snow of the road.

The Black Lotus turned to see the two other benders already down on the ground. The larger one flat on his back, probably already dead. The smaller curled up on himself, alive but not for long. Toph was still just standing in the slush of the road. Her arms at her side, her face turned in the swordsman's direction, a look of wonder and perhaps fear on her face. On the far side stood the Earth Kingdom deserter, arms hanging limp, and surprise on his face. Sokka ran for him, jumping over the bodies lying in his path, his clothes still steaming wisps of steam. As he jumped Sokka released his war cry, singing it out as he flew towards the swordsman in green.

The tribesman landed in water and melted snow, and nearly lost his footing, sliding up to the man in green who still had not moved. The terror in the deserter's eyes clear to the blued eyed teen. The warrior was too close now for the cutting attack he had planned so Sokka used the grip of his sword to knock up the brim of the conical helmet the man wore then drove the pommel into the ex-soldier's forehead, stunning him, and knocking the man off his feet. Reaching down Deep Blue pulled the deserter's untouched sword from its scabbard and tossed it out into the square.

Sokka turned and looked out on the square. The three benders were all down, either dead or dying. Toph still stood in the road. Her face turned towards him, apparently unharmed, but with that strange look on her face. More people had come out onto the porches now, but none of them were armed or looked in the least bit threatening. With a practiced whip of his sword through the air, the teen flicked the blood from his blade and re-sheathed it. He rushed to his friend.

"Toph are you alright?" The Water Tribesman asked gently taking her shoulders in his hands.

"What…?" The blind woman asked, her voice distracted and lost.

"Are you hurt?" The boy asked her, his concern evident.

"No…" Toph answered, running her hands over herself, her voice still somewhat lost.

"Cold." She finally said.

"Your poor feet." Sokka said, looking down at her stocking feet in the icy slush of the road.

The boy swung the girl up into his arms and carried her toward the dry porch of the inn. The blind woman snaked her arms around the young man's neck as he carried her.

"Sorry…" Toph told him as he rushed towards the inn.

"What for?" The warrior asked in turn.

"I didn't help." The twelve year old explained. "It was all so fast and then there was blood, a lot of blood. I could smell it, I could feel it. It was hot as it hit me. I could feel what was going on but I just froze. I'm sorry."

"That's ok, Toph." The boy told her. "It's over now!"

Sokka jumped up onto the stone porch of the inn.

"Can I have a chair please?" The young man asked of the people standing on the porch.

An older man, with an apron on, ducked into the doorway and returned with a wooden chair and set it on to the porch for the tribesman.

"Thanks." The young man said setting his friend onto the chair.

"You killed them." It was the sad eyed teenage girl who spoke, wonder in her voice. "All alone you killed them all."

"Just the benders." Sokka answered, pulling his friend's wet socks off of her feet.

"Of course…" The girl said almost to herself. "… That's what the travelers said. You only kill the benders."

There was a moan from the square as the Earth Army deserter began to get up on his hands and knees. The sad eyed girl looked to the deserter then ran to the cart of firewood.

"Here." The older man said, offering the swordsman a towel, while pointing to his own face with his free hand.

Sokka took the towel and looked at Toph's face. He saw small drops of blood covering her face and clothes. The arterial spray from the smaller bender. The tribesman began to gently wipe his friends face and hands clean.

"What?" The blind woman asked.

"Blood." The warrior answered.

"You're always cleaning blood off of me." She said with a sad smile.

"Yeah… I guess so." He replied with the same sadness in his voice, remembering the well in the desert.

The movement in front of the inn had broken whatever spell had been holding people in place around the square. There was the low murmur of quiet conversations and people were moving from group to group.

Sad Eyes picked up a heavy chunk of fire wood and strode purposefully out into the square toward the green clad ex-soldier who was kneeling in the road rubbing his forehead.

Once Sokka had cleaned Toph of the blood he used the clean part of the towel to dry her feet. He saw that his own hands were covered in blood. Once her feet were dry he stepped off the porch and putting a handful of clean snow into the towel began to wash his own hands clean.

"Tell me how much you like it!" The teenage girl shouted as she raised the firewood up high and smashed it down on the deserter, hitting his helmet and shoulder.

Sokka, standing by his friend reached for his sword. The thin man who had been by the wood cart moved then. Rushing over and taking up the discarded broad sword and running toward the deserter.

"Please… I'm sorry!" Earth Guy cried, holding up his hands to protect himself.

"Tell me how good I am!" Sad Eyes shouting striking with the makeshift club again, with little effect.

"I'm sorry!" The man on his knees cried out, ducking.

"For Bosco!" The thin man shouted swinging the sword clumsily at the deserter, missing him entirely.

"What's going on?" Toph asked, her numb feet on the stone of the porch.

"An execution I think." Sokka replied releasing his grip on Spring Rain.

"Tell me how good I am!" The girl shouted striking again, hitting the deserter hard on the helmet.

"Mommy?" A little boy asked from across the square.

"For Bosco!" The thin man shouted bringing the sword down a little more accurately this time and striking the injured man on the shoulder, the sword bouncing off his Earth Kingdom armor.

"I'm sorry… Please…" The deserter pleaded trying to get up.

"Mommy has something to take care of dear. Just be patient and wait there." It was the twenty something mother Sokka had seen earlier who spoke.

Her little boy was standing by himself on the porch of the large house across the square from the inn. An older woman came over and comforted the boy while his mother, carrying a three tined long handled digging rake was striding towards the Earth Kingdom deserter.

"Tell me I'm the best!" The girl shouted, smashing the chunk of wood down on the kneeling man.

"I'm sorry!" The man shouted back trying to crawl away from his attackers.

"For Bosco!" The thin man shouted again, swinging the sword down to little effect.

"Maybe I should…" Sokka began but was stopped by a hand on his arm.

The tribesman looked to see an older woman in an apron holding him back. The innkeeper's wife he assumed.

"It's better if you let them finish it." The woman told him, an unreadable expression on her face.

"Tell me how big I am!" The girl shouted as she struck.

"Oma please! I'm sorry!" The deserter cried.

"Get his helmet off!" The mother ordered, pointing to the thin man.

"What?" He asked the borrowed sword raised over his head.

"Take his helmet off!" The young woman ordered.

"Oh… Right." The thin man said dropping the sword and grabbing the crawling man's helmet and after some trouble finally got it off of him.

"Thanks." The girl said breathlessly, swinging the firewood back up into the air.

"For Oma's sake please! Someone help me!" The deserted shouted to the square.

The dark skinned teen turned away from the square and back to his friend sitting in the chair.

"You sure you're ok?" The young man asked the bender.

"Fine." She answered. "What about you? I could feel a fire blast."

"I'm fine." The warrior replied resting the snow filled towel on the backs of his hands. "My hands got burned a little but that's all."

"Tell me how much you want me!" The teenage girl screamed as she struck the man on his unprotected head, driving him down to his elbows, as he tried to crawl away.

"This is for your friend." A man's voice said behind the Tribesman.

Sokka turned to see the man he thought of as the inn keeper set down a small charcoal stove in front of Toph. The blind woman's face lit up as she felt the heat.

"I should get your boots." The swordsman said.

"Mommy?" The little boy called from across the square.

"For Bosco!" The thin man shouted striking at the man's back with the broad sword.

"You stay here." The older woman said, spritely hopping off the porch. "I'll get them."

"Mommy's almost finished dear!" The woman said bringing the heavy rake down onto the man's back.

The deserter screamed in fear and terror has the heavy tines bit through his armor and into his back.

"I smelled and felt the blood." Toph said, moving her feet as close as she dared to the small pagoda shaped stove. "But I also could smell… other stuff."

"Yeah!" The tribesman said squatting down by his friend. "When they die they lose all control and they piss and shit themselves. There is no dignity, honor, or glory in dying."

"TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU WANT ME!" Sad Eyes screamed as she struck the man with her chunk of wood.

"Here you are." The Innkeeper's wife said setting Toph's boots down beside her, and patting the blind girl's shoulder.

"Thank you." Sokka said, giving a small bow as he returned the now blood stained towel to the inn keeper.

"No, no." The older man replied, accepting the towel. "Thank you. We had heard about you but we never thought you would come to such a small village as ours."

"For Bosco!" The thin man, who was openly weeping now, cried as he struck ineffectually with the sword.

"You boys." The inn keeper's wife called to a group of children that had assembled on the porch and were staring at the tribesman. "Make yourselves useful. Get the nice man's packs and bags and bring them here. The Black Lotus and his friend will be staying at the inn tonight."

"Please help me!" The deserter called. "They're killing me!"

The ex-soldier's plea was cut off by a scream as the young mother slammed the rake into his back again punching through his armor.

"You will be staying with us won't you?" The older woman asked the blue eyed warrior. "Free of charge of course."

"Ah… yes of course. Thank you." The teen replied.

Sokka didn't know what to do. He could stop the villagers from killing the man but only by fighting and perhaps killing some of them. And even if he did stop them when he left in the morning they would kill the man anyway. No… best to let their vengeance take its course.

"Mommy?" The child called again.

"Please! I'm sorry" The man pleaded.

"TELL ME YOU NEED ME!" Sad Eyes screamed as she smashed her club down.

"For Bosco!" The thin man wept swinging the sword.

"Mommy will be right there dear!" The mother called out, pulling and twisting on the handle of the rake to free it from the man's back. "Just be patient for a little longer."

"Here sir." A boy standing in front of the Water Tribesman said holding out the two bloody knives the teen had discarded in the fight.

"Oh… Thank you." Sokka replied accepting the throwing knives.

"Oh no! Thank you sir." The boy said bowing to the warrior.

"Yes! Thank you sir." Chorused the other children, three boys and a girl as they deposited the teens ruck sack and shoulder bags and duffle on the porch.

"Please no more." The dying man in the road pleaded. "I have a mother. She needs me."

The man in earth army green was no longer trying to crawl away. He was coughing up blood. One or more of the tines of the rake must have pierced a lung. He was on his hands and knees just trying to hold himself up.

"TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU LOVE ME!" The teenage girl screamed smashing her club down onto his skull.

The man crumpled at that blow and just lay on the snow covered road. All three of his attackers were panting from their exertion. The girl could barely hold up the hunk of wood in her hands. The thin man was leaning on the borrowed sword. The young mother carefully swung the rake down burying it in the man's skull. The dead man didn't even twitch.

"Mommy's done now dear." The woman called out to her son pulling the rake out of the dead man.

Once it was free she turned towards the large house and returned to her child.

The girl dropped the piece of fire wood and followed the young mother.

The thin man turned toward the inn and, still crying, walked toward the dark skinned warrior.

Sokka looked at the haggard face of the thin man as he approached. It was dirty and tear streaked but familiar all the same. Finally as the man stepped up onto the porch it clicked in the tribesman's mind. The glasses were gone but the eyes were the same. The long face was gaunt now not just thin but it had to be him. It was the Earth King who stood before him.

"Your maj…" The blue eyed teen began, but was stopped by a hand to his chest preventing him from bowing to the monarch.

"Just call me Kuei." The Young man asked in a whisper. "They don't know who I am here and I want to keep it that way."

"Of course your… Kuei." The tribesman replied.

The young king looked into the blue eyes of the warrior for a second then nodding his head he said,

"It is you is it not? The young warrior and the blind earthbender that rescued me from the Dai Li. Sokka and Toph?"

"Yes… Kuei." Sokka was still having a hard time not using the king's formal title. "It's us."

"They killed Bosco." The young monarch said as fresh tears came to his eyes. "Those fire nation bastards burned him to death. They laughed. That scum laughed as they did it. Bosco would never hurt anyone, he was only trying to protect me, and those bastards killed him, burnt him alive."

"I'm sorry…" The young warrior said taking the man by the shoulder.

"Thank you! He always liked you two, you know." Kuei told the tribesman as he moved in and hugged the surprised teen.

"Oh and do not worry, we will not tell anyone your real names." The Earth King confided to the young man as they broke the hug.

"Sorry?" The tribesman asked.

"Well you would not want the world to know that the Black Lotus is Sokka of the water tribe would you?" The thin man explained with a wink. "I know about secret identities."

Before the confused teen could respond the monarch had turned to the other men by the cart and called out,

"Chong you remember my old friend Bumi and his friend Ju Dee don't you?"

"Chong?" Sokka asked a little fear entering into his voice along with the surprise.

"Who's Chong?" Toph asked, standing up from her place by the small stove.

The young warrior pushed his hat back on his head to get a better look as the two men and the boy came up on the porch. Sure enough it was Chong and the heavy set drummer from the musical nomads they had met during and just after the war. The boy was familiar as well but the tribesman could not remember his name. All three looked haggard as did the Earth King; they must have had a rough time under the rule of the deserters.

"No dude!" Chong exclaimed looking the dark teen in the face. "This isn't Bumi, this is Sokka dude, from the water tribe, and that's his friend Toph! You got their names all wrong."

The teen heard a loud smack and turned just in time to see Kuei lower his hand from his forehead were a red palm shaped mark was beginning to grow.

More of the villagers were beginning to come over to the inn and the large porch was becoming crowded. There were murmurs between the assembled people. The young man heard his name being said a number of times and his friend's as well.

"You've changed dude!" Chong told the tribesman. "You're a total bad ass now. Wow, did you see how you took out all those guys man. Not that violence is a solution but those guys were really bad and you really did a job on them!"

"You idiot!" The boy from the cart suddenly cried, shoving Sokka in the chest. "She could have been hurt or killed even. Did you even think about that?"

Before the startled swordsman could respond the twelve year old boy had roughly pushed past him and had grabbed his blind companion in a fierce hug.

The metal bender felt her feet leave the ground as the boy grabbed her. _What the hell?_ She thought as he set her down. Then she felt something, well maybe two somethings, cold and rough and moving push up against her mouth. She also felt the boys nose scrunch up into her own, then the nose and rough things were gone.

"Toph are you ok?" The boy asked her. "I was so scared for you. I thought that jerk was going to get you hurt."

"I'm fine." The metal bender told the boy, her arms still pinned to her side by his arms.

"I'm so glad you're ok!" The boy exclaimed.

Toph felt the rough cold moving things on her mouth again, and the nose against her's, and then they were gone again.

"Toph don't you recognize me?" The boy asked. "It's me, Ohev."

"Oh yeah Ohev!" The blind bender said getting her hands up onto his chest and holding him back.

_Did he just kiss me?_ The young woman asked herself. _Twice?_

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

I apologize for the two month wait for this chapter. Here's the excuse. Before the Holidays a friend asked me and my wife to help him with a play he was producing, directing, and staring in. She is the assistant director and I am the fight choreographer. The play is "Cyrano de Bergerac" and we had some casting problems, which made more work for me and we ended up with a lot of fights which ate even more of my time, then our friend got sick so my wife and I had to take over more work, so my writing time shrank to almost nothing.

Our friend is much better now and everything is back to normal. The show opened last weekend so my time has finally freed up and I was able to finish this chapter and get it up. I just hope that most of you will stick with the story and accept my sincere apology for the long delay.

I plan to put up a new chapter every two weeks from now till the end of the story.

Once again I am very sorry for the long delay. I hope you liked the chapter.

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More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt both Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

To: Klimmatt; Sorry for the long delay. I am glad you are enjoying the story.

To AlecRob; Sorry (Really sorry! :)

To: Grapes; Yes…?

To: Helell; I have to apologize once again for the delay in getting the chapter up. Thank you very much for your high praise. I only hope you will continue to read the story. Chapter 44 wasn't really what I would consider a filler chapter, because of Snowy. I wanted to get back to the little kid Sokka but had to move them through a bit of travel to get the conditions right for Snowy to show up.

To: bg21; Sorry once again. I will try very hard to get a chapter out every two weeks if not faster from here on in.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	46. Chapter 46

I'll Walk You Home pt. 46

Chapter 15

pt. 3

Chosen

* * *

_I'll just kill him, the little shit!_ Sokka thought. The tribesman was sitting at a small table in the common room of the inn. A cup of cold tea was sitting untouched before him along with a small cold porcelain tea pot. His hat, scarf and coat were thrown over the one other chair by the table and his weapons, still attached to his heavy leather belt were laid on the seat of the same chair.

_"It's me, Asshole (or something that sounds like asshole)!"_ In his mind the blue eyed teen mimicked the young musician's introduction. _"Let me stick my tongue down your throat, you'll remember that!"_

_That's not quite how I remember it._ Sokka's higher brain functions commented, watching the memory playing out in the tribesman's mind. _He didn't say that last part, the kisses were just quick pecks and there was none of the pelvic thrusting you've got going on._

_Shut the FUCK UP!_ The dark skinned teen's lizard brain shouted. _I'm going to twist that little shits head off. I'm going to literally kick the living shit out that fucking piece of… shit!_

The young man's hands were balled into fist by now, the tension rolling up into his shoulders and causing his head to drop. The only people in the common room were the inn keeper and her husband standing by the counter, and Toph sitting over by the fireplace with her bare feet on the stone hearth, and all of them were keeping well away from the warrior as he sat, mumbling and growling and not drinking tea.

_The little fuck!_ Sokka's mind raced on. _Kissing my girlfriend right in front of me!_

_She's not your girlfriend._ The tribesman's higher functions admonished, but the comment was washed away as the lizard brain ranted on.

_I should have beaten him into the ground right then and there, smashed his stupid head in with my club. No! No! I'll use my fists! Yeah! I'll punch the living shit out of the little bastard! She's my girl you son of a bitch!_ Sokka began to run the scene in his mind of his next encounter with the nomad. _She's mine, and if you ever touch her, or even look at her again I'll kick your ass from here to Ba Sing Se, you little piece of platypus/bear shit!_

There was a loud thump as the young man's fist smashed down onto the table. The thump was followed by the tinkle of porcelain as the cup fell over and spilled it's cold contents onto the table.

"Fuck!" The young man cursed righting the cup and moving his chair back to avoid the spill. "Sorry…" He told the innkeeper looking up.

Sokka's hands, shoulders and neck hurt. The innkeeper's husband, Dong-Sung was his name, came over and with his ever present towel cleaned up the mess.

"It's ok son." The older man reassured the younger one, as he took away the cup and tea pot.

As he passed his wife the man commented in a whisper,

"It can't be easy killing three men, even if they did deserve it."

The innkeeper nodded sadly in agreement. She too had watched the young man's torment as he had sat alone, refusing even the comfort of his beloved companion, The Blind Queen.

Sokka began to shake the tension out of his hands, and rolling his head on his neck. Then he felt a small hand on his shoulder.

"Sorry." He mumbled looking up to see his friend standing behind him.

"No, I'm sorry." Toph said, laying both hands on her friend's shoulders.

The blind earthbender had never given a shoulder rub before but she had received a number of wonderful ones from the tribesman and she thought now would be a good time to return the favor. She slid her hands up to his neck and began to massage the muscles she found there. They were as tight as stone under her calloused fingers. Remembering the feeling of his hands on her own neck, she tried to translate it into action.

"You've got nothing to be sorry for." The young man told her, embarrassed.

"It's my fault you had to kill those benders." The young woman objected.

The blind bender used her strong hands to work the tension from her friend's neck. She heard him grunt in appreciation, as he lowered his head to give her easier access to his long neck. After almost a minute the metal bender began to speak, she let the words come out in a rush, afraid the warrior would interrupt before she was finished, and she wanted him to hear all she had to say to him.

"If I hadn't been caught by surprise." Toph said, still massaging Sokka's neck. "By the snow and then the blood, I could have taken them down easily. It just happened so fast. I've never felt you like that. You were just a blur. And then the fire blast. You jumped and were gone, and I thought you were killed, but you landed and before I could do anything the firebender was falling. I could feel them all on the ground, their hearts going faster and faster until they just stopped, and they were all dead. You just killed them all so fast. That's what happened in the desert wasn't it? All those sand benders, you just killed them, their hearts stopping as they died."

"Toph, that hurts." The young man said, reaching up and taking her hands from his neck.

Without realizing it the blind bender had been rubbing and squeezing harder and harder as she spoke, until her friend had finally stopped her.

"Sorry." The young woman said trying to pull her hands away.

The young man held onto her right hand, turning in his chair to face her, he held her hand in both of his own.

"Toph I did what I did, because of who I am." The warrior told her looking up into her face, her eyes not meeting his own. "And because of who they were. None of it is or was your fault. You don't owe me anything."

The twelve year old gave a little snort of disagreement, but she did not pull her hand from his.

"Toph I did what I did because we are friends." The teen told her, his thumb gently stroking her hand. "That's what friends do. They look out for each other, they help each other. Not because they expect anything from the other person, but because they love each other. Just like I love you."

With this last Toph felt Sokka move her hand to his lips and felt his gentle kiss across her knuckles. She was unable to reply since her heart was firmly wedge in her throat. Though, if the young man had been looking up at that time, he might have noted the tears threatening to spill out of her cloudy green eyes as her response.

"Hey Toph we're back!" Ohev's voice called from the door to the inn.

Surprised, the young woman pulled her hand free from the young man's. Since she was blind she could not see the sadness in the young man's eyes as her hand left his, or the sudden flash of anger as those same blue eyes turned on the boy walking into the common room.

"Sorry we were gone so long." The boy said coming up behind the blind woman and snaking his arms around her waist. "But someone has to clean up after the great warrior. And cleaning up always takes longer than making the mess."

"Ohev!" Toph said turning on the boy.

Sokka stood and stared down at the musician, who took a small step back from the taller man. As the blind woman turned back to her friend he turned and pulled on his weapons belt, buckling it around his waist.

"Sokka…" The bender began but was stopped by her friend saying,

"I have to go do something."

The tribesman threw on his hat and coat as he headed for the door to the outside.

"Sokka I want to talk." The young woman called after him.

"This won't take long." The warrior stopped and told her, while he settled his coat onto his shoulders. "It's just some clean up only I can do and I need to do it now. I'll be right back and we can talk all you want then."

"Ho… Dude great coat man." Chong told the tribesman as he came through the open door.

"Ah… thanks." The young man said. "Chong where did you take the bodies?"

"Oh the bodies, man. That was a bad trip… yeah… real bad." The nomad replied thoughtfully.

The tribesman turned to the incognito king who had entered with the nomad leader.

"I can show you." Kuei replied to the implied question in the warrior's eyes.

"Thanks." The dark skinned teen replied walking through the door.

The disguised monarch followed him out onto the porch. Sokka stood on the porch for a moment taking in the village and the day around him. The sun was high and warm in a pale blue sky with only a hint of high wispy cloud in it. It was close to noon. The air was still without even a breath of wind in it. The sound of water was all around the tribesman. The snow was melting and the water was dripping and running off of the roofs of the buildings in the square. There were patches of flagstones showing on the ancient highway. The bloody snow was almost all gone, melted and running through the gutters into the river nearby.

"You go across the bridge and follow that road." Kuei told the young man, pointing out the route. "We left them in the cart. The villager who helped said we should wait until the snow had melted and the ground was soft before we bury them. He told us that here in the mountains it will snow in the morning and most if not all of it will be gone before the sun sets."

"Got it. Thanks." The young man replied.

"Oh…" The king continued holding up the scabbarded sword in his left hand. "There is this sword and we found some money on them. They are yours by right of conquest, I suppose."

The warrior looked as the monarch began to search his pockets for the purses taken from the deserters. The teen didn't really care about any of this.

"Keep the sword." The dark man told the thin one. "And… I guess give the money to the village elders."

"Thank you." Kuei bowed, accepting the gift of the weapon.

"You're welcome." The swordsman replied with a bow.

The door behind them opened and Sokka looked to see Toph and Ohev come out of the inn, walking hand in hand. That was enough for the young man, turning he jumped off the porch followed by Kuei, who had to almost jog to keep up with the hunter's long strides. The two crossed the bridge and the disguised monarch pointed up a snow covered road, then hurried after the tribesman as he strode up the road that led to the bodies of the men he had killed that morning the skirts of his black coat billowing out around his legs.

The blind earthbender jerked the young musician's hand and told him,

"We have to talk."

The young woman stomped her foot down on the porch and sent a wave of bending out through the valley. She now had a good sense of the village. Near the bridge she felt a short flight of steps leading down to a stone landing beside the river where a number of small row boats were tied up. The landing looked like a good place for a private conversation. Dragging the twelve year old nomad by the hand she walked to the head of the stairs.

* * *

"If you don't mind…" The Earth King panted out as he struggled to keep up. "Why are we going up to the graveyard?"

"I have a task… a duty to perform for the dead." The warrior replied, slowing his pace slightly to allow the taller man to catch up.

"Ahhhh… yes duty." The king replied.

Sokka looked to the disguised monarch and thought a moment. If anyone knew about duty it would be a monarch. The tribesman had attended many meetings of the ruling council in Ba Sing Se before he had left with Toph and he knew of the politics in the kingdom.

"Kuei…" The young man said, finally coming to a decision. "When do you plan on returning to Ba Sing Se?"

"Never!" Kuei said with conviction. "I'm much happier as a vagabond musician than I ever was as a king."

"But the kingdom needs you." The tribesman insisted. "The people need their king."

"No they don't." Kuei sadly replied. "I was a useless ruler. Fooled and gullied into doing whatever Long Fen wanted. At least now I am a mediocre musician, which is a lot better than a bad monarch."

"Kuei this kingdom needs someone on its throne." The warrior said.

"Someone else!" The taller man said with a sad chuckle. "Someone better than me."

"There is no one else." The warrior said stopping in the road and turning to the king. "You are that someone, whether you want to be or not. There are people who can change the world. Some of them will do anything to gain that power, people like Sozin, Ozai, or Long Fen. Some of them become that person through ability, like Avatar Aang, and some just because of who their parents are like Zuko and like you. Call it fate or karma, or just bad luck, but you are one of those people. There are millions of people in this kingdom depending on you. Yes, you never asked for it but you're the only one who can protect them. If someone else takes the throne it will mean civil war, where thousands will die and all will suffer.

"You don't understand!" Kuei shot back at the teen with hurt and anger in his voice. "It's easy for you. Take this village. Four deserters show up and I'm helpless, useless. They kill whoever they want, take whatever they want, and I can't do a thing. Is that the way a king, a ruler behaves. They killed Bosco and I did nothing! I was too afraid to even try. But you! You just walk in and in seconds you kill them all. This great terror that has enslaved all of us is nothing to you. For you it's all so easy they didn't even stand a chance against you."

Sokka stood looking at the thin man. His left hand in an unconscious gesture of competence was casually gripping the pommel of Spring Rain. He could not believe what he had just heard.

"You think that was easy?" The warrior asked. "You think I wasn't so scared that I wasn't on the verge of shitting myself the entire time? I had no choice! They were going to hurt Toph, maybe kill her, and as long as I'm alive I will never let anyone, anyone hurt someone I love ever again."

"But you did it." Kuei sadly responded.

"Great!" Was the young man's sarcastic reply. "I defeated four bandits and saved one village. From your throne you can save a thousand villages with only a few words. Now that sounds easy to me."

"You know it won't be like that." The monarch replied bitterly. "There'll be politics and deals and compromises, and everyone trying to get all they can."

"But you can still do it, and no one else can." The warrior responded, the sincerity evident in his voice. "You don't have to be a great king. You just have to do the best job you can. But you're the poor luckless bastard that's stuck with the job."

"If only I was a bastard." The young king said with a smile. "Then I wouldn't have the job."

Sokka laughed at the joke, and slapped the taller man on the shoulder.

"Yeah… well some of us can never catch a break." The tribesman ruefully told the monarch as he started the two of them on up the road.

* * *

"Toph, I'm sorry." Ohev told the young woman standing before him on the small stone dock by the river. "I was very rude to your friend."

The blind bender was glad to hear the apology from the boy. She was angry with him for his attitude towards the warrior. The fact that she was standing bare foot on a cold wet stone landing after having walked through a lot of snow to get there just to straighten the boy out, had not improved her mood. But the apology had lightened it considerably. Her right arm shot out and her fist landed with a hard punch to the boy's upper left arm in reward.

"Ow!" The musician cried, stepping back and grabbing his arm. "What'd you do that for? I said I was sorry."

The young woman turned away to hid her smile at the boy's discomfiture.

"It's just that…" The nomad began still rubbing his arm. "Well… I'm just sick of soldiers, and fighters, and Warriors."

The twelve year old boy said the last word with special emphasis, making it seem silly and absurd.

"Earth Army, Fire Army, mercenary, deserter it doesn't matter. They're all like him with their weapons and their bending, just a bunch of arrogant bullies telling us all what to do."

"Sokka's not like that!" The bender insisted.

"He's a fighter isn't he?" The boy asked. "That's all I need to know!"

"I'm a fighter." The woman said in a cold challenging voice.

"Not like him." The boy insisted in a conciliatory manner approaching the blind bender. "You're a little girl. Not a killer. He's just like those fire benders."

"He's not a killer. And he's nothing like those benders." Toph insisted.

"You can't say that." Ohev argued. "You don't know anything about him! They are all the same, all the soldiers, all the killers."

"I don't know anything about him?" The young woman demanded. "I've only spent every day of nearly a year with him, sharing everything with him. Sharing secrets we've never told anyone but each other, fighting alongside each other, risking our lives for each other, protecting each other, saving each other so many times that we've lost count."

"Yeah! I don't know anything about him!" The earthbender said, approaching the young musician. "I just know that he's the bravest, kindest, most caring, most giving, most loving man I've ever met. I know his family was torn apart by this war. I know the girl he loved sacrificed herself because of this war. I know that he gave up everything to help the Avatar end this fucking war. I know that he's the only one in the world, including my family that has ever treated me like the person I am not what they think I am, or who they want me to be. He knows more about me than my own mother does. I know that if I ever need anything he's the one person I can go to, that I can ask any question of, no matter how personal, no matter how stupid, no matter how embarrassing, and he will answer and tell me the truth."

"Toph…" The boy began, but was cut off by the woman.

"I'm not finished!" The bender shouted, shoving the boy in the chest with both hands and forcing him to back up from her. "I know that he's funny, and can be a complete child sometimes, and a complete idiot, and that he likes terrible puns, and that his jokes are the worst in the world but are still funny. I know that he's gotten two fish hooks stuck in his thumb at the same time. I know that he'd liked to live the rest of his life in a library, with a shop and restaurant in it. I know that he loves meat. I know that he loves being sarcastic. I know that he loves being silly. I know that he loves his family and his friends. I know that if I asked for it he would give me his last coin, his last bite of food, his last drop of blood. I know that I'm his friend, his best friend and he's mine. I know everything about him."

"Toph!" The boy said in surprise. "We have something, I know it. We have something special, a real connection."

"Ohev…" The young woman said with a sigh. "You seem like a nice guy. I think we could be friends, but I don't know you! I don't know anything about you! We spent ten minutes together one afternoon when I was feeling down on myself."

"I thought we were soul mates." The musician declared.

"Fine!" Toph replied, her voice starting low but climbing in intensity as she spoke. "Then let me tell you, my soul mate, something I haven't told anyone, not even Sokka. I love him! I love him so much I can't breathe around him. I love him so much that my heart is glad anytime I hear his voice. I love just knowing he's near me, that he's thinking about me. I love touching him, I love touching his skin, his hair. I love the sound of his heart when I lay my head on his chest. I love his strong hand in mine. I love feeling his arms around me. I love when he rubs his nose against mine. I love feeling his breath on my cheek. I love him so much that I don't care if he doesn't even love me back. I love him so much that I'm going to live the rest of my life with him, as a friend, as a lover, I just don't care. I can't live without him!"

The green eyed woman wiped the tears from her cheeks as she turned away from the boy.

"And one last thing…" The blind woman said gaining control over herself, and turning towards the young vagabond. "If you ever repeat anything I have just said I will bury you so deep that all the earthbenders in the world won't be able to dig you out."

Ohev did not reply. If he knew one thing about Toph, it was that she was telling the truth at this moment.

"I'm going back to the inn." The metal bender told the boy walking to the stairs. "My feet are cold."

* * *

Toph was crossing to the inn when she heard it. She stopped, turning toward the faint sound, and stood in the melting snow, even as it numbed her feet, and listened. The sound was coming from far away across the river. It was a song/chant and she knew who was singing it. It was a trick of the still air that allowed the sound to be carried across the valley. It was in that old language that Katara and Sokka sang in. It was low and mournful. She waited until she was sure it had ended before she continued on her way, afraid to move for fear of losing the haunting sound of the man she loved singing his strange, mournful song.

* * *

Sokka walked into the inn pausing for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the relative dark interior after the bright noon time day he had come in from. He saw Toph sitting by the fire, her chair tilted back, and her feet on the stone hearth. He was surprised to see her sitting alone. At the one long table Chong, his wife Lily, the heavy set drummer of the group, and the young boy Ohev, _I still think it sounds like Asshole,_ were sitting on benches talking. Kuei, with the deserters sword stuck through his sash walked past the teen and joined the other nomads. At one of the booths along the outer wall were the sad eyed teenage girl and the young mother with her son.

The warrior threw his hat and coat over the chair where his scarf still hung from this morning. Grabbing the other chair he walked over to the fireplace and his friend.

"Hey Toph." The young man said, setting the chair down opposite to the blind woman and sitting just to the side of the open hearth of the fire.

"Hey Meathead." The young woman replied with a subdued tone to her voice.

"Sorry about before." He told her, looking at her face. "I just had something I had to do."

"I understand." The bender replied, turning her face towards where her ears told her his face was.

"What did you want to talk about?" The swordsman asked.

"Nothing really." She replied, shrugging and dropping her face toward the floor. "I just wanted to… well say sorry for what Ohev said."

"No problem." The swordsman told her.

Sokka looked over toward the table where the young musician sat. Their eyes met. _Little shit!_ The tribesman thought and saw an answering look in the boy's eyes, which caused the young man to quirk a small smile at the boy, who looked away from the challenge.

The dark skinned teen looked back to his friend.

"How're your feet doing?" He asked the bender, while shifting his chair.

"Fine now." The blind woman replied.

"Let me take a look at them for you." The warrior said, taking her ankles and lifting her feet from the hearth.

Toph squawked in protest as she felt herself tilt dangerously back on the back legs of the chair she was in. She grabbed the seat with both hands to hang on, but the young man's strong hands pulled her safely forward as he deposited her feet into his lap.

"We do this all the time back home." The tribesman explained, lifting her left foot up towards his face so he could examine the sole. "It's really hard to look at your own feet, so after a long day on the ice you'd come inside and ask someone, your mother, sister, someone to check your feet, and you'd check theirs."

Sokka held the blind benders left ankle with his left hand while he ran his right along the sole of her foot. Toph giggled and arched her foot and toes at the contact. The feeling sent a warm shiver down her leg.

"I am not going to inspect your smelly feet." The young woman told the tribesman.

"I didn't expect you to." The young man smiled in reply, as he ran his hand over the bottom of her foot again.

"That tickles." Toph said pulling her foot away from the touch, but her friend did not surrender it and continued his inspection.

"I'm surprised you can even feel it." The young man noted, as he began to look between her toes. "You have so much callous and dirt I'm surprised you can feel anything."

Sokka began to use both hands to massage his friend's small foot. His long hard fingers and strong thumbs kneading and rubbing the small appendage. The young woman did not try to pull her foot away again. She just let the wonderful sensations run from her foot up her leg, through her body to lodge in her chest where they caused her heart to flutter and her lungs to feel weak and barely able to supply her with air.

"Well no obvious frost bite or damage." The tribesman reported as he finished and lowered her foot onto his thigh.

Just as the blind bender started to sigh in relief, she felt her right foot lifted up and the sensations began all over again.

Sokka shot a look over at Ohev and saw the fury in the boy's eyes as he ran his hands over Toph's foot. _Yeah, fuck you too Asshole!_ The tribesman thought looking at the musician. _Please try something. I'd dearly love to kick your ass right now!_ But his mind soon returned to the young woman in front of him as he felt her toes curl under his touch. _Toph really has great feet!_ He thought inspecting them. _Ok! You are officially weird!_ His higher brain functions told him. _What? He replied to himself. She really does have great feet!_ He insisted to himself, beginning the massage.

"You have Momo toes." The young man observed, as his thumbs worked the ball of his friend's foot.

"What?" Toph asked as if she was distracted from a very pleasant daydream.

"You have Momo toes, long and strong." The tribesman explained, as he continued rubbing his friend's foot.

The blind earthbender smiled at the description. She dropped the chair down onto all four legs and ran her free left foot along the young man's thigh while making small chirping sounds trying to mimic the Avatar's small lemur. She was unable to use her bending to sense her friend or the world, since she was not in contact with her element, so it became a new game for her to use just her foot to feel where he was and what she was in contact with.

Toph's toes felt the tribesman's robe and his strong stomach under the cloth. Flexing her toes she used them to mimic the lemur's ability to climb on the young man. She remembered that Sokka used to let Momo climb inside his clothes looking for treats that he had hidden there for the small flying creature. The bender pulled her other foot free of the young man's hands, and tilting back on her chair pushed it onto his chest, still chirping and purring, while her toes "climbed" up the hard chest of her friend.

The bender's right foot moved up to the man's neck, feeling the ivory choker, her toes up to the hard line of his jaw.

"Now Momo!" The young man admonished with a smile. "I don't have anything for you today."

Toph made a sad chirp in answer as her toes continued to explore her friend. Her left foot moving over his chest her toes pulling at the tie that closed his robe, while her right moved up the left side of his face, finding his ear.

"Ow Ow! Not the ear ring." The young man said as he felt the tug. "Bad Momo!"

The bender laughed, then gave a sad little chirp in reply.

"Sorry little guy!" Sokka said laughing, holding onto the young woman's legs to keep her from falling over backward on her tilted chair.

The raven haired woman, laughing, let her chair drop down onto the floor again as the blue eyed man released her legs and her feet fell down onto the stone floor. The chairs had moved in the little game and the two were now sitting close to one another their knees touching. At some point in the game both had forgotten about everyone else in the inn. Now it was just the two of them enjoying each other. Enjoying memories of old times together. Enjoying being silly and childish.

Toph, with her feet on the ground sent out a small wave of bending and felt her friend there before her. She felt his knees inside of hers. She sensed the smile on his face and the large grin on her own. Her bending told her when he raised his hands. Her skin shivered slightly as his fingers stroked her cheeks, and she sensed his head moving in towards her own. She leaned forward, large grin still on her face.

"Momo…" The young man said, as he leaned in toward the young woman's face. "You are too cute."

Toph felt Sokka's nose touch hers and rub against it. She rubbed back making a happy chirping sound at the contact.

The sound of a bench being scraped across the stone floor brought the two back to the realization that they were actually in a common room of an inn with a fair number of people in it. They both pulled away from each other. Sokka dropped his hands to his sides embarrassed. He turned toward the sound to see Ohev standing by the table looking at him, fury and hurt in the boy's eyes. Then the musician turned and strode out of the inn into the street slamming the door behind him.

"I should probably get us some rooms for the night." The young man said, while looking at his hands.

"I already did." The bender told him, shifting her chair and setting her feet back onto the hearth, wriggling her toes in the warmth of the fire. "Just one room, on the ground floor out back. I didn't want you sitting outside my door all night. You can have the bed, I prefer the floor anyway."

"Thanks." The tribesman assented, shifting his own chair so he could sit beside the young woman, and resting his own booted feet on the hearth away from the fire. "How much do I owe you?"

"I offered them a silver but the innkeeper, her name is Eun by the way, said there would be no charge." The blind woman told her friend. "So I left her a gold on the counter."

"Good one, Bandit!" The young man chuckled.

"Oh… " The young woman continued. "The guy, he's about your age, that helps out took our bags into the room. His name is Kyo. He wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" The tribesman asked.

"Not sure." Misty Green answered.

"Excuse me…" A teen age girl's voice came from behind the two.

Sokka turned to see the sad eyed girl from this morning walking tentatively up to the two friends.

"May I make a request of you?" The teenager asked, bowing.

The tribesman stood, returning the bow. He offered the younger teen his chair.

"Oh no…" She protested.

"Please." The young man insisted. "If you don't sit then the two of us will just stand here uncomfortably while we talk."

"Well… Thank you." The sad eyed girl said giving a little bow and sitting in the chair.

Sokka walked to a small table and moved it over to the fireplace, and set it between the two young women. He returned a moment later with a chair. Before he sat down he waved to the innkeeper's husband and mimed pouring tea, then held up three fingers. Dong-Sung nodded and whipping his hands on his towel walked into the kitchen.

"What can we do for you?" The warrior asked as he sat down.

The girl sat staring at her hands, rubbing her palms together for a time. Finally in a quiet voice she asked,

"I was hoping that… well… you being the Black Lotus…"

"He's not the Black Lotus." Toph said, dropping her feet to the floor and turning to the pretty teenager.

"I'm sorry!" The teen replied. "The elders spread the word, don't worry no one will ever mention your real names."

Sokka's eyebrow shot up in curiosity at the statement but before he could ask for an explanation a new voice distracted him.

"Can I please join you?" A woman asked.

The tribesman looked up to see the young mother who had been sharing a booth with the sad eyed teen earlier standing by the table, her son on her hip.

"My name is Jin-Sook and this is my son Jung-Hun and I am a friend of Yun-Hee." With this last the woman indicated the teenager sitting with the two travelers.

The young man stood and offered his chair to the twenty something woman, who bowed and sat down, placing her two year old in her lap. Sokka pulled another chair over and sat down next to his friend.

"You should know." Jin-Sook continued once the young man was settled. "That those men, all of them, deserved what happened to them. Even the Earth Army soldier. The four of them walked into our village about a month ago. They came into the square and shouted for the law enforcer. Our valley is too small to have any real government. We have a mayor, Yun-Hee's father, and a small council of elders, none of whom are paid. And we have no enforcer except for old man Ki-Hun who used to run the tackle shop. He used to make the most beautiful and delicate fishing flies. Ki-Hun came out of his shop at the shouting and asked what they wanted. The big one laughed and said 'An Example!.' Then the three firebenders burned old man Ki alive, right there in the square."

The young mother stopped for a moment as Dong-Sung arrived with a pot of tea and three cups on a tray. He set them down on the table.

"I'll bring another cup." The man said taking the tray.

"Yes please. Thank you." The dark skinned warrior told the older man.

"Well everyone heard the screaming and came out of their houses to see what had happened." The young mother continued, once the innkeeper's husband had left. "The big one shouted that unless we gave them what they wanted they would burn the whole village and all the farms. All our young men are off in the army. The only earthbenders are young children, so there really was nothing we could do but obey the bandits. They asked for food, shelter, money, and… girls, young girls, pretty girls, one for each of them. Chang-Ho, Yun-Hee's father, convinced them that we were a small village and that they would have to settle for only one girl."

"So your father gave you to them?" Toph asked.

"No, no!" The teenager insisted. "The elders were going to choose someone, or draw names. My father was trying to protect the village, and me."

"Yun-Hee volunteered." Jin-Sook told the warrior and the bender. "She sacrificed herself for the village."

The blind woman felt her friend tense at the words.

"I had to." The sad eyed teen explained. "I was the mayor's daughter. If anyone had to be sacrificed it had to be me. It was my duty."

Sokka felt his eyes burn. He looked down and cleared the tears from his throat.

The aproned man returned then and set a new cup, a second pot of tea and small bowl of fried noodles on the table.

"Thank you." The young man said, his voice still choked with emotion.

"Hungry!" The little boy said reaching toward the noodles.

The young boy's mother took one from the bowl and handed it to him. The small child smiled and began to nibble on the warm delicacy.

"So Yun-Hee was given to the bandits." The young mother went on the anger evident in her voice and manner.

"The four took over the inn and anyone who came into the valley, like those musicians" She said indicating Chong and the others with a nod of her head. "Or the fishermen that came up from the south were either killed or taken prisoner and made into slaves for them. Then you two came in this morning. We thought they would burn you down, or enslave you but you killed them. You made it seem so easy, almost like magic. You didn't even use any bending. One second they were standing there, invulnerable and terrorizing everyone and the next second they were all on the ground dead or dying. Except that one."

"What I did…" The sad eyed teen began but was stopped by her friend.

"Had to be done." Jin-Sook told the traveling companions. "It was necessary, and he deserved it."

"More!" The child demanded holding out his hand and looking to his mother.

The woman handed the boy another treat, and looked to the blind woman and the warrior.

"Can I see you hand please?" Sokka asked holding out his own hand toward the teenager.

The tribesman had noticed that she had been rubbing her right palm the entire time she had been sitting there.

"It's nothing!" The girl said letting go of her hand. "Just a splinter."

"Please?" The warrior asked in a gentle tone, still holding his own hand out.

Eventually the girl relented and gave the young man her hand to inspect. Sokka examined her palm carefully in the light from the window.

"I got all the others out but that one was too deep." The teen said turning her face away.

"I can't stand splinters." The young man said. "I think I can get it out but it will hurt."

"Go ahead." Yun-Hee said. "I can take a little pain."

"I'm sure you can." The warrior told the teen with a grim smile.

Sokka reached behind his back pulled out his heavy skinning knife. The young girl's eyes grew wide at the size of the blade in the young man's hand.

"Shall I be mother then?" Jin-Sook asked picking up one of the pots and pouring out tea for all.

The tribesman looked at the steaming cup before him and then with a smile placed the point of his knife in the hot liquid and held it there.

Sokka pulled the knife out of the tea and in a quick motion tossed it up into the air. The little boy laughed at the bright steel flashing as it spun. The tribesman caught the weapon as it came down by the back of the blade. To the young mother he held it like a scribe holding a delicate calligraphy brush. The young man moved the blade towards the girl's hand.

"You said you had a request?" The swordsman asked as he began working on getting the splinter out of the girl's soft palm.

"Well, I am planning to leave the village tomorrow…" The girl began but was cut off before she could finish by the young mother.

"Yun you don't have to leave. Everyone knows and understands, and is grateful for what you did."

"That doesn't change anything." The teen replied with heat. "If I stay here what am I going to do? Everyone knows what those men did to me. I'll be the whore of Chosen. 'Oh, she was very brave but that doesn't mean she's not a whore'" The teen said bitterly mimicking the voice of some older woman. "No my only choice is to leave and try to start a new life. I've talked to the nomads and they say I can travel with them, so I'll be going north tomorrow."

"This is your home." Jin-Sook pleaded with her. "There are always some idiots and prigs in every village but your strong enough to ignore them."

The sad eyed teen leaned in to her friend and in a quiet desperate voice told her,

"I'm late! I can't raise one of their bastards in this village. Not after everything they did."

"Oh Yun, I didn't know." The mother answered in sympathy. "You could…"

"No!" The teen replied. "Believe me I'm tempted but no I can't do that. And I can't stay here, so tomorrow I'm going north."

"Got it!" Sokka said holding up his knife with the long piece of wood trapped between his thumb nail and the blade tip.

"Oh!" Yun-Hee said surprised. "That hardly hurt at all."

"He's good with knives." Toph said sipping her tea.

"I don't know how much good it will do you." The warrior said, deftly returning his knife to its scabbard. "But I could write a couple of letters of introduction for you. Depending on how far north you plan to go."

"Thank you." The pretty girl said with a small smile.

"Well don't thank me yet." The tribesman warned. "I'm nobody important, and like I say, I don't know how much good those letters will do you."

"Actually what I was hoping was that you would mark me." The girl said.

"Sorry?" The warrior asked taking a sip of tea.

"I'll be a young woman traveling alone." The girl explained. "In the stories we heard the Black Lotus would mark the women under his protection. I was hoping you would mark me."

"Ah… Well I'm not the Black Lotus and I don't…" The young man began to say, then his voice faded and he looked off into space for a few seconds. "Oh! Yeah! Of course! You mean the Black Lotus on your…"

The tribesman began pointing to the pretty girl's chest then realized that it was probably rude to do so and stopped.

"You know Toph like that girl in the fair." Sokka said turning to his friend, then he turned back to the teenager he went on, "I guess I could draw one, a black lotus blossom, on your… chest for you, but I'd feel really funny doing it, and I don't know how well it would turn out."

The thought of the pretty young woman half naked while he tried to paint on her had caused the fifteen year old's higher brain functions to throw up its hands, while his lizard brain was breathing too hard for any coherent thoughts to form in what was left of his brain. His heart decided this would be a good time to send all his blood into his face and his large ears.

"You don't want him drawing on your chest." The blind woman said with a snicker.

"Hey!" The young man protested.

"Meathead!" The bender answered. "From everything I've heard about your art I'm pretty sure that realism is not where your gift lies."

"True." The tribesman conceded. "I am more of a romantic."

The table was quiet for a second, then the young man grabbed a handful of fried noodles and stuffed them into his mouth.

"You know who you should ask?" Sokka said around the crunching of the treats. "Is Lilly, she's really good at painting flowers and stuff on people's faces. You could say she's a professional. Plus being a girl, sorry woman really, she wouldn't have a problem painting your chest, you know there…" He pointed to the center of the woman's chest before turning his hand and tapping his own breast bone. "… a… here, actually, between your… a …"

"Boobs?" Toph offered enjoying her friend's obvious discomfort.

"Mamaries!" The fifteen year old blurted out, then striking himself in the forehead with the palm of his right hand. "I'll be happy to write those letters for you though. How about some lunch?"

"You are not like them at all." Jin-Sook said bouncing her son on her knee. "When I saw your dark skin I thought you were like that one firebender but your nothing like him."

"Meathead is nothing like anyone you will ever meet." Toph said with a warm smile, then she kicked him under the table.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Well here is the next chapter I hope it reads ok. I actually rewrote and changed an number of things and I'm still not real happy with it but I hope it came out ok.

Chosen was the name of a reservoir in North Korean were a terrible winter battle was fought between UN forces (principally U.S. Marines) and Chinese troops. I chose that for the name of the town for a couple of reasons.

Thanks so much for reading.

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More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt both Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

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I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

To Bob; I essentially agree with you about Ohev. He is a very contrived character thrown in so Toph has a date for the prom. I have treated him rather rudely in this chapter but at least I didn't have Sokka kill him.

To Numlits; Thank you very much. I'm really glad the fight worked for you, and especially that line. Thanks so much for all your support.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter. xxxx

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	47. Chapter 47

I'll Walk You Home pt. 47

Chapter 15

pt. 4

Chosen

* * *

Sokka stood on the porch of the inn in the warm afternoon sun watching Toph play with the village children. She was using her earth bending in a game of keep away. Every time the ball landed, a short earth pillar would shoot it up and over the kids' heads to a new spot. The children were screaming and shouting and laughing to one another trying to catch the ball.

"It's good to hear them laugh again." A voice beside the teen observed.

The tribesman turned to see Kuei standing next to him, watching the small earthbender and the children play.

"Yeah." The teen agreed watching his friend grinning and laughing with the children.

The two men watched for a short while. Then the younger unbuckled his weapons belt and held it up towards the disguised monarch.

"Could you hold this for me?" Sokka asked.

"Of course." Kuei answered taking the heavy belt.

The tribesman backed up a few steps then, waiting for just the right moment, ran forward launching himself off of the porch and into the air, snatching the ball in midflight. Landing he turned to the little girl who had helped carry his pack earlier in the day.

"Catch!" The dark skinned teen called as he winked at the girl.

Sokka did not think Toph would be able to pick up on the subtle signal of an eye wink. He shot his hands towards the village girl but held onto the ball, giving a false toss. He was not surprised to see a stone barrier jet up out of the ground between him and his target. He ran forward jumping up, and with a one handed throw tossed the ball over the rampart to the girl on the other side, who, a little surprised, caught it after a small fumble.

"Du! Catch!" The little girl called throwing the ball to a boy on the other side of the square.

And the game was on again. Toph won of course, but with Sokka playing against her she now had to work for her victory, which made it all the more enjoyable for the small bender.

* * *

The common room of the inn was full of people. As the sun had gone down people had come to the inn. There had been a short memorial service for those who had been killed by the deserters. Kuei had wept as he told of the bravery and the death of Bosco. Others had spoken of old man Ki and the people from the south who had been burned down as they entered the town or tried to resist the bandits.

Afterwards there had been food and drink, and a lot of speeches and even more drinking. The small earthbender sipping at her plum wine and the water tribe warrior had a cup of something called spiced rum that came from the islands to the south, and was served warm. The teen thought it tasted sweet but burned in his stomach.

Everyone thanked the two young people for freeing the valley from the marauders. Sokka was embarrassed by all the attention. Toph rather enjoyed all the praise poured onto her friend.

As the dishes were cleared and more drinks poured, tables and chairs were moved to clear a space by the hearth. Chong and his group moved chairs and pulled out their instruments. It was now time for the entertainment portion of the impromptu celebration.

Sokka sipped his rum, and smiled as he watched Kuei, fifty second king of the Earth Kingdom, sit amongst the vagabond players and tune his erhu. The tribesman had to admit that the young monarch looked at home and happy with his instrument, talking and joking with the other band members, as they tuned their instruments to each other.

The tribesman spotted Ohev off on the side of the group, holding a tambourine. The dark skinned teen smiled to himself thinking _Asshole is first tambourine_. Then the young man chuckled, _second tambourine, Lily is first tambourine_. He remembered that the band leader's wife would play and dance along on the songs. _I hope Asshole doesn't dance too._

The colorfully dressed woman was walking in front of the group, waiting for her husband to finish tuning up the band. A flower painted on her face and little snow flowers braided into her hair.

Chong turned to the audience and struck a loud chord on his strange six stringed instrument, and began to sing.

"Two Lovers…

Forbidden from one anotherrrr

A war divides their peoplelllllll…."

The band performed a rousing rendition of the song 'Secret Tunnel', which was greeted with applause and cheers from the crowd, and groans from the tribesman.

"Thank you! Thank you!" Chong called out as the clapping died down. "That was 'Secret Tunnel' which has very special meaning for the band, 'cause that's where we first met this guy!"

With this last the musician pointed to the water tribesman.

"He was traveling with his sister and this weird bald kid who had these wild blue arrows tattooed all over him." The leader of the band went on. "Now a days this guy has a lot of names but then he was just this water tribe guy named Sokka, and here's a little song I wrote about him, and how he saved us in the Cave of the Two Lovers." Then as an afterthought Chong added. "Did you know that two hour torches only add up if you burn them one at a time? That's something to think about man."

Then the leader of the band struck a chord and the band was playing again.

"Oh, don't let the cave-in get you down.

Don't let the falling rocks turn your smile into a frown.

When the tunnels are darkest that's when you need a clown, hey!

Don't let the cave-in get you down, Sokka!

But the cave in had trapped us and the torches were burning low

Then the big bad giant badger moles came to gobble us whole.

But Sokka was brave and Sokka was smart and Sokka picked up a guitar and began to play."

Here the song changed rhythm and chords as Chong led the band.

"Badgermoles coming toward me, Sokka sang.

Come on guys help me out...

The big bad badgermoles, who earthbend the tunnels,

Hate the wolfbats, but love the sounds.

Then the song changed back to the original rhythm.

"Yes the badgermoles loved music,

And we all began to play

'Cause Sokka had showed the way

Music saved us all that day."

"You were attacked by giant badgermoles and you sang to them?" Toph asked turning towards her friend.

"I was desperate." The teen explained, looking embarrassed.

The band played and sang and Sokka climbed up on the biggest badgermole.

The badgermole bucked and jumped but Sokka paid the toll.

He hung on, hung on, hung on to that big bad badgermole.

"Wait!" Toph said leaning over the table toward the blue eyed teen. "You rode an adult wild totally untamed badgermole?"

Yeah… What?" Sokka replied.

"And Sokka rode the big bad badger mole through the mountain of earth

Till we tunneled out into the sunlight and a breath

Riding the backs of the music loving badgermolesssssssssss"

There was applause as Chong finished the song.

"You rode a badger mole while it was tunneling?" Toph asked, in a desperate voice, grabbing the tribesman's robe and pulling him almost across the small table between them.

"Like I said…" The dark teen explained defensively. "We didn't have any choice."

_She probably thinks that I'm too stupid, or too much of a wimp to ride a badgermole._ The young man thought. The tribesman knew that the animals were the earthbender's only friends when she was growing up. They had taught her earth bending and how to see with her feet. _Maybe she thinks it is demeaning for her friends to be ridden by someone like me._ He knew that people rode badgermoles. He had seen that guy at the Earth Rumble riding the animal that cleared the fighting ring in the arena. _That's it!_ The young man thought. _That guy was probably an earthbender. Only earthbenders are allowed to ride her friends._

Toph let go of the blue eyed boy and sat back in her chair, trying to get her heart under control. _Meathead is either the dumbest guy or the bravest man the world has ever seen!_ She told herself. The small bender knew that badgermoles were very territorial and could be very aggressive and were probably the most dangerous animals in the world to those who trespassed in their tunnels. They were the same as dragons, the only animals that could bend an element.

The small bender knew that Bohai, who rode the badgermole at the earth rumble, had raised it from a pup, and had spent years training it just so he could get on it, and even he never tried to ride it when it was tunneling. Yet Sokka had ridden a large wild mole, obviously female, since they were the largest and the most aggressive, and the most dangerous, while it tunneled through the mountain.

That Sokka had been accepted by the badgermoles, just as she had been, not just accepted, but allowed to ride on their backs, something she herself had never even dared, caused the young woman's heart to flutter wildly in her chest.

"So that goes to show you man…" Chong was saying as Toph returned to the here and now. "…that Music can get you out of times of trouble better than trouble can get you out of times of music."

The musician struck a new chord on his instrument, which ended the confused murmurs his last statement had earned from the audience.

"Now we'd like to do another song I wrote just today, about the same guy but with a different name in this one." Chong told the crowd, ending with an exaggerated wink to the young tribesman. "This song is called 'The Ballad of Cho-sen'." (Sung to the tune of John Hardy)

"(C)Oh Cho-sen was a sleepy (G)little village

(C)Nestled up in the (G)hills

(C)The people were happy and the people (G)were free

(G)And the river ran down to the sea

(G)And the river ran free to (E)the sea

.

Then one bad day the fire benders came

They marched into our town

They called for the law man and they burned him down

They burned poor old Ki down

(Poor Boy)

They burned poor old Ki down

.

The fire benders turned us all into their slaves

They demanded all we had

They wanted our money and they wanted our food

And they wanted the four best that we had

(Bad Men)

They wanted the four best that we had

.

But brave Yun-Hee, the princess of the village

She told the fire benders no

She said 'you may take me

But my sisters all must go free

(Brave girl)

My sisters they all will go free'

.

So the fire benders ruled poor little Cho-sen

Like tyrants ruled of old

They took what they wanted while we wept and cried

With only Yun-Hee standing proud

(Poor Girl)

And only Yun-Hee standing proud

.

Sokka glanced over to the sad eyed teen and saw her sitting with her father and the young mother. Yun-Hee did not look proud, she looked embarrassed and as if she wanted to crawl under the table. Jin-Sook put her arm around the teen's shoulder and squeezed hard, trying to comfort her. Oblivious to the pain he was causing, Chong continued on with his song.

Then one sunny day, with snow on the valley

A strange young couple came to town

The girl was dressed all in white

But the man he was dressed in black

(Coal Black)

Black from his hat to the ground

"My outfit is white?" Toph asked in a whisper.

"No" Sokka whispered back. "I guess he thinks white sounds better than tan."

Well the pair walked into the center of the village

And the man called out 'Howdy'

He was a country boy by the sound of his voice

A country boy like you and me

(Poor Boy)

A country boy like you and me

.

The fire benders laughed to hear him talk

They walked right up to the boy

The benders meant to burn him down

Burn that young man alive

(Poor Boy)

Burn him down alive

.

Well we all held our breath to see such a sight

We knew what the benders would do

We had seen them burn many men down

This country boy would not be the last

(Poor boy)

This country boy would not be the last

.

Well the girl in white she kicked off her boots and took a fighting stance

She was a bender of renown

The woman in white was the blind queen

And she would always choose to fight

(Brave Girl)

She would always choose to fight

.

"Earthbender' The fire bender cried

As he made ready to burn her down

They were the last words that he ever did speak

For the Black Lotus had come to our town

(That day)

The Black Lotus had come to our town

.

The man in black he struck the evil bender down

Then he struck the second just the same

Like lightning he struck and the benders both went down

Two firebenders dead on the ground

(Yes Sir)

Two firebenders dead on the ground

.

There was a third bender who shot his fire

But he might as well had stopped and prayed

For the Black Lotus fears no fire or flame

He jumped right through that fire ball

(Brave Man)

He jumped right through that fireball

.

And with his sword the man in black

Struck that last bender down

The Black Lotus stabbed him dead

Three evil benders dying on the ground

(Fire Benders)

Three benders dead on the ground

.

There was a forth evil man in the group

A bad earth kingdom man

The Man in Black knocked him down

For the Black Lotus only kills benders

(Good Man)

The Black Lotus only kills the benders

.

So young Yun-Hee grabbed up a log of wood

And Kuei the nomad picked up the fallen sword

And they struck that last man down

They put that bandit in the ground

(Poor boy)

They put that bandit into the ground

.

So if you live in a happy little village

And the evil benders come to make you slaves

Just pray to the moon every single night

That the Black Lotus will come to your town

(Brave Man)

'Cause the Black lotus will put those benders downnnnn

.

* * *

After the song the people in the inn had come up and congratulated the two and thanked Sokka again for saving them. Everyone was loud and laughing, praising the young warrior for his skill and courage.

A young man, perhaps only a year or two younger than the warrior had replaced the cup of rum the tribesman had been sipping. Instead of leaving the young man stood off to the side for a time until the crowd had thinned around the swordsman.

Sokka had just sat down when the young man approached him and bowed saying,

"Master may I have a word with you?"

The tribesman regained his feet and returning the bow, answered,

"I am not a master of anyone or anything."

"I saw you today." The young man, his eyes shining with admiration, told the tribesman. "You were the master of those firebenders."

"I was lucky and scared." The dark skinned teen responded.

The young man pulled up a chair and sat down at the table the two friends were sharing. Leaning in he introduced himself to the blue eyed warrior,

"My name is Kyo. I work her at the inn and on my parent's farm."

"I am Sokka." The older of the two replied.

"Can you teach me?" The farm boy asked.

"Teach you what?" The tribesman asked in a quiet voice.

"How to kill benders!" The younger of the two answered.

"Why?" The swordsman asked shocked.

The younger teen thought for a moment then looking into the eyes of the warrior explained,

"When I was a kid I used to idolize benders. I was jealous of them. All that power."

Kyo looked down for a moment embarrassed but finally lifted his eyes to the swordsman and explained.

"I used to sneak out behind the farm house and try to earth bend. I know it's silly now but I really wanted to be a bender. I would try for hours to make a pebble move. I was so stupid." The younger teen snorted. "Then when those fire benders came and I saw what they did, how they acted towards us, just because we couldn't bend. That's when I realized the truth. I didn't want to be a bender! I hated benders, all of them. Why should they have that power. Why should they be able to order us around, treat us like slaves. Just because they could do something that we couldn't."

"Then you came and everything changed." Kyo's eyes lit up as he looked into the blue eyes of the swordsman. "That's when I realized that you don't have to be a bender to make a difference. You killed them so fast, so easy."

"I want you to teach me how to kill benders!" The younger man became animated as he went on. "I want to help you, travel with you, help you put the benders down. We could be a team. And when I've learned enough I could go out on my own and get my own student. It could be a movement, a whole new force in the world that would end the benders and their power!"

"Stop!" Sokka said holding up his hand, and silencing the villager. "I didn't kill those men because they were benders. I fought them and killed them because they were attacking my friend. They were evil men. Being fire benders didn't make them evil, how they chose to use that gift is what made them bad and led them to their deaths. I am not on some crusade to kill benders."

"If you hate benders that's your choice, but it is the same as hating someone from a different nation, or a different village for that matter." The dark skinned teen explained. "I used to hate anyone from the Fire Nation, till I learned that they were just people. Some good, some bad, and the bad can change, and become good, just as the good can become bad. And those that won't change… well they have to be dealt with."

Sokka dragged his hands over his face, and then looked at the boy across from him.

"I fight!" The swordsman tried to explain. "I don't kill. If I was really good, like some people I know, I wouldn't have to kill. I could just disable my opponents without spilling a drop of blood. But I'm not that good. I have to kill to win, not because I want to kill, but because I want to win, and killing my opponent is the easiest, quickest way to win."

Kyo looked into the warrior's eyes, still not convinced.

The tribesman shook his head then asked,

"Your family? Mother? Father? Brothers? Sisters?"

"My parents, my sister and me." The villager answered.

"Your father, what's he do?" The older teen asked.

"Farmer." Kyo answered, the way he said it told how little he thought of that life.

"Good farmer?" The hunter asked.

"I guess." The younger man answered grudgingly.

"You ever help him?" The warrior continued.

"Every day." The villager replied with disgust.

"Is it hard, being a farmer." The tribesman queried, his voice becoming more insistent.

"It sucks!" Kyo answered, letting a little anger enter his voice.

"But he does it, your father, he does it every day?" The blue eyes burned.

"Yeah! Ok I get it!" The younger teen told the older.

Sokka's right hand shot out and grabbed Kyo by the shirt front, pulling him half way out of his chair. It was so fast Toph wasn't sure what had happened until it was over and the two young men were face to face with each other across the table from her. The room started to grow quiet.

"No you don't!" The dark skinned man said in a low dangerous voice. "Your father, from the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to sleep is thinking about one thing. He breaks his back every day, all day, because of one thing. He does it all because he loves you and your sister and your mother. Not because he hates, not because he wants to get even with the universe for not making him a bender. But that's not good enough for you. You want to be something special, you want to be a warrior, an avenger, a killer."

"I'll tell you a little secret." Sokka's voice became even quieter, darker. "You don't have to hate to kill. I could kill you right now, and I don't even know you. It would be easy. One minute you'd be alive, the next you'd be dead. I wouldn't even have to use a weapon, no blood, no mess. You'd just be dead."

"Sokka?" Toph whispered, fear and concern filling the word with urgency.

The blind woman had never seen her friend like this, so cold, so frightening.

"You'd be dead and no one here could do anything about it, except for my friend over there." The swordsman indicated the small bender across the table from him with a nod of his head. "It doesn't matter whether you're a bender or not. All that matters is what you do and why you do it. Be happy your father loves you and is willing to kill himself a little each day to keep you under a roof, warm and well fed. If you were a real man, if you really wanted to make a difference, to be special, you'd be just like him, and not want to follow some stranger around feeding your hate on death."

Sokka let the boy go. Kyo just caught himself from falling to the floor, by leaning on the table. Toph breathed a small sigh of relief. The villager stood and looking back at the darker teen walked away from the table. The band was still playing and people were still talking, but to the blind woman, the sound seemed to rise in the room and more voices joined in the singing just then.

"I've got to go do something." The tribesman said rising and pulling on his hat and coat.

"I'll go with you." Toph said standing.

"No!" Sokka commanded, then in a softer tone he explained, "I have to do it alone, ok? I won't be long, honest."

"Ok." Toph answered, regaining her chair.

Using her bending the blind woman felt her friend go out of the inn into the night.

* * *

More songs were being played and sung and people were beginning to sing along with the band on the more popular ones. Toph had finally gone outside to wait for Sokka's return. She sent her bending out into the valley searching for him. Eventually she found him far up on the slope on the other side of the river where the bodies of the deserters had been buried. She was about to go back inside when Yun-Hee and the young mother and her son came out onto the porch.

"Too much noise." Jin-Sook said while setting her son down on the cold stones of the porch.

The small boy toddled around the platform.

The teenage girl stood on the edge looking out over the village. The three women stood silently on the porch, their breaths creating small clouds of fog in the cold mountain air.

"I can't wait to leave." Yun-Hee finally said.

* * *

It was cold, standing barefoot on the porch, without her coat and scarf. Eventually Toph went back into the inn, but the common room was crowded and noisy. Ohev kept trying to talk to her and she eventually left and went to the room reserved for her and her friend.

The room was nice but spare, with a dresser on one wall and a large bed against another one. The floor was stone. The blind woman pulled the heavy quilt off of the bed, then, with a sly grin, she pulled the straw filled mattress onto the floor as well. She did not need it for comfort. With her bending she could turn the stone floor into any consistency she wanted. But the mattress would be warmer and since the bed was a simple wooden frame Sokka would not be able to use it without a mattress and they would have to share her improvised floor bed.

The young bender had been in bed for about a half an hour when she heard the door to the room open and the sound of the party, still going strong, intruded on the quiet of the cold room. Then the door shut and the room returned to its relative quiet. She heard a series of shuffling steps as the young man crossed the room, and then there was a bump and the bed rattled and a subdued,

"Ow…" From her friend.

"You ok?" She asked from the floor.

"Yeah!" The warrior replied. "Just dark in here… And no comments from the blind girl please."

"I didn't say a thing." The young woman replied in her most innocent tone.

"I could hear you thinking!" The swordsman insisted.

There was a surprised,

"Woah!" From the young man as he sat on the bed.

"Mattress?" He asked.

"I've got it on the floor." The bender answered. "We can share."

"Sounds good." The young man replied pulling off his boots.

The two let the silence grow for a time. Then the young woman asked,

"You were gone for a while. Everything ok?"

"Yeah… Just wanted to do some thinking is all." The warrior explained as he dropped a boot onto the floor.

"You don't hate me because I'm a bender, do you?" The blind woman asked.

"Toph!" The dark skinned teen said, letting his tone tell her just how silly a question he thought that was. "Yeah sure I hate you, but not because you're a bender. It's everything else about you."

"I'm serious." She told him. "That Kyo guy got me thinking..."

"Toph." The warrior cut her off. "I love you, and bending is part of you so I love your bending."

"You really love me?" The blind woman asked in a timid voice.

"Of course!" The young man answered. "In a best friend sort of way, of course."

"Of course!" The young woman echoed.

"Toph?" The tribesman asked as he continued to undress.

There was something, sadness, concern, something that made the young earthbender's heart beat a little faster in her chest.

"Yes." The earthbender replied, worry creeping into her tone.

"I know you don't think much of non-benders." The swordsman explained. "But you don't hate me because I'm not a bender do you?"

"Sokka! You Idiot!" The small woman almost shouted at the young man, as she shot up onto her knees on the mattress. "I Lo… Ike you!"

The little earthbender had tried, she had really tried, but at the last moment she couldn't tell her young man the truth. He was already in love with Suki, and before the Kyoshi Warrior, he had loved Yue, a beautiful princess,. He loved non-benders, he loved women older than she was. He would probably laugh at her if she told him the truth. He was so much older he would probably laugh at her and call her a silly little girl. He was too amazing and brave and smart to love a stupid little blind girl. And so, in the end fear had won out, but she still couldn't stop herself from letting him know a little of how she felt about him.

There was a loud thump as the swordsman fell on the floor. To Sokka's credit he had been taking his pants off at the time and his legs were tangled when he was surprised by the sudden outburst from the young bender.

"You like me?" The tribesman asked from the floor, the huge smile on his face evident in his voice.

"Maybe!" Toph answered, turning her face away to hide the hot blush that covered it, not realizing that in the darkness of the room he would not be able to see it any way. "Just a little!"

The young woman said this last with a touch of anger, at being caught in revealing even a hint of her true feelings.

"Really?" The young man said sitting up, and grinning like an imaginary cat.

"A little!" Toph insisted, lying back down and covering herself with the quilt.

The young woman waited in embarrassed silence for the snarky comment, the snide remark from the tribesman. But it never came. All she heard was a musical humming coming from the young man as he finished getting ready for bed.

Sokka was happy. He was very happy. He hadn't been this happy in a long time. He had spent nearly all of the last year with the small earthbender thinking that she despised him, had only put up with his presence because of the war and her desire to train the Avatar. He had tried every day to get her to like him, without success. Now, after his own feelings for her had changed so much, to hear that she actually liked him, even just a little, made the teen happier than he had been since his time with Yue. Unconsciously he began to hum a happy little tune as he set his weapons around the bed so they would be handy in case of trouble.

The small woman felt the quilt rise and the mattress shift as the young man crawled under the covers with her. She had pulled herself down the bed so she could cover herself completely with the quilt. There was movement as the two of them, lying on their sides facing each other got their arms and legs sorted out. Her head ended up just under his chin, with her nose up against his hard chest. Her left leg pushed in between both of his, somehow Sokka was able to lay his right leg over her left one while still keeping most of his weight on the bed so it was just the right amount of pressure on her. Her hands were on his chest, exploring his wonderful skin. As always he was in just his loin cloth and she in her under tunic and shorts.

The young woman's hands found a little nub of a scab on the teen's chest. Her finger nail began to tug on the irregularity. Sokka's right hand was gently stroking her back, leaving small trails of fire on her skin through the cloth of her tunic. A small sigh escaped her lips as he ran his hand up from the small of her back to the base of her neck.

"Ok? The dark skinned teen asked.

"Feels good." The small bender replied, snuggling closer to the warmth of the young man.

"Good." He told her, continuing the back scratch, the silly grin still on his face.

The scab came off and the blind woman ran her calloused fingertip over the new, smooth skin that had been revealed. The young man's left hand began to stroke the head of the small woman in his arms, smoothing her loose hair, with his fingers.

"I used to do that too." The young man finally admitted.

"What?" The metal bender asked, lost in her own thoughts and the pleasure of the strong hands.

"When we found out that Katara was a bender…" the tribesman explained. "Oh very big family secret, 'You can't tell anyone about your sister and her bending.' I used to sneak off and try to water bend. I'd spend hours trying to move one snow flake. I'd curse and pray and make deals with Tui and La if only they'd let me bend. And I'd cry when the snow flake never moved."

"Do you still want to be a bender?" The young woman asked.

"Sometimes." The swordsman replied, his hand leaving trails of fire on the woman's back. "But not so much anymore. I guess I've finally decided that I'm ok with who I am at this point, though the healing thing would be real handy."

"You're lucky." The twelve year old sighed. "Not like me. You don't need bending. Without my earthbending no one would even know I exist."

"Don't be silly." The young man told her, his hands now giving up the back scratch and turning it into a massage. "Your bending is amazing so of course that's the first thing people notice about you, well they probably notice that you're pretty first, then they see your incredible skill and power at bending. But without your bending you'd still be pretty. And above all that your smart, and funny and incredibly brave and strong, and I don't mean physically strong, though you are that too. No… You're a really amazing woman Toph, don't ever let yourself think otherwise."

The small woman wasn't sure if she truly believed the young man, but it felt good to hear him say what he had, and she could tell by his heart beat that he believed everything he had just told her, which was even better than if she believed it.

"Thanks." She told him, laying the side of her face against his chest.

"No problem." He replied, starting up the back rub again.

"Mmmm." The young woman responded to the massage, she felt like purring.

Sokka just smiled. This had been a good night. Toph had said she liked him and now she seemed to be enjoying the back rub. This was a very good night.

_You should give her ass a rub! _The tribesman's lizard brain insisted.

_Just shut the fuck up! _His higher functions responded_._

Sokka didn't want anything to change this lovely moment.

"You smell like soap." Toph observed in quiet breathy voice.

"Yeah." The swordsman told her. "Had to wash up."

The warrior felt the young woman stiffen slightly in his arms.

"Blood." The blind woman stated.

"Yeah." The teen responded in a sad voice.

Toph remembered the warm spray that had hit her face and hands that morning. At the memory, a cold shiver ran through her.

"Sorry." She told her friend.

The earthbender was sorry she had not helped. She had left him all the fighting, all the killing. Sorry she had been stupid, and scared and cold, sorry she had wanted to walk home, sorry she had let him come along, sorry she was the cause of all the killing and fighting.

"Nothing to be sorry about." The warrior told her. "You're the normal one Toph. I'm the one that goes crazy."

"You're not crazy." The blind woman told him, her fingers nervously picking at another scab on the young man's chest. "You're a warrior."

"And warriors aren't crazy?" The tribesman asked, his hands resting on the woman's back. "All my life I wanted to be a warrior. Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a great hero. Protecting my family, my tribe, the people I love. But today, that one fire bender, he looked like me. Or I looked like him really. He had dark skin and was about my size but he was much older, twice as old as me, maybe even older. I wonder if he always wanted to be a warrior. If in fifteen or twenty years will I be him? Killing because it is easy, taking what I want from strangers."

"You're nothing like any of those benders." The twelve year old told her friend, with all the surety that only someone so young can have.

"You don't know that, Toph." The young man warned. "I could be just like him. Today this kid did something that pissed me off and for a second I thought 'I could just kill the little asshole.' It would be easy and no one would say anything, and even if they wanted to they probably wouldn't, or couldn't have done anything about it."

"So where's the body?" The young bender asked, her head still against the young man's chest, the scab coming away under her finger nail.

"What body?" The tribesman asked.

"That's why you'll never be like those benders." Toph told him.

The green eyed girl felt the strong arms of the warrior wrap around her and pull her close against his warm body.

"I hope you're right, Toph." The young man said kissing the top of her head.

"I am!" The blind woman said, sending her arms around his neck and returning the hug.

"Thanks." The swordsman replied.

The young couple lay in each other's arms for a time, each just enjoying the warmth and closeness of the other. Finally the young man eased the embrace and sliding his face down the side of the young woman's cheek, shifted until he was nose to nose with her.

"Good night Toph." He said rubbing his nose against hers in the dark of the cold room.

"'Night Sokka." She said, rubbing her nose against his in the warm embrace of his strong arms.

XXX

Toph woke up. She didn't know what time it was but it felt early. She was lying in the bed on her stomach and there was a weight on her back holding her down onto the mattress. It took her a moment to realize that it was Sokka. He was covering her, holding her down. She could feel his warm breath caress her ear as his head lay next to hers.

The small bender felt his hand move under her, sliding up towards her chest, and she became a little frightened, there was a desperation in the the way the young man was holding her, and in his movement. She was not sure what he was doing. Then his hand found hers and gripped it.

"Toph, don't leave me." The teen whispered into her ear. "Don't ever let go."

The blind woman could hear the desperate need in the young man's voice. His grip on her hand was painful as he held onto her.

"I've got you." The tribesman said, his voice strange and frightened, colored with sleep. "Hang on, I'll never let you go."

That was when Toph realized that Sokka was dreaming and acting out his dream. She knew what dream her friend was having, having had the same dream herself many times, though it had been a week or two since the last time. To the young man they were back on the air ship. She was hanging from his hand and their fingers were slipping, slipping, and she was going to fall away from him.

Her eyes began to burn with tears as she squeezed back, adding her own strength to that of his.

"I'll never let you go." She whispered to him. "I love you Sokka. I'll never let you go."

The bender felt the young man relax then. His breathing slowed and deepened. The grip on her hand loosened, and was no longer painful. He slid off of her slightly and the weight of his body was now warm and comforting not heavy.

"Love you Toph." Sokka said in his sleep.

Toph eventually got back to sleep. Still holding his hand.

XXXX

Sokka did not remember dreaming about the air ship battle. The dream he did remember was the one he had right before he woke up that morning.

The dark skinned teen was back in the desert. The captain of the slavers was standing before him. But the sand bender didn't look right. He was too small, he looked like a boy, and instead of looking defeated he was laughing. The sand bender's face changed and became that of the young nomad musician. Laughing in triumph at the water tribesman.

Sokka felt the anger rise in him as he looked at the laughing Ohev. Finally unable to contain himself the swordsman strode forward and smashed the pommel of Spring Rain into the boy's forehead. Ohev stopped laughing at that, the look of triumph replaced by one of accusation. The nomad then pointed to the dark mark on his forehead, left by the pommel of the sword.

XXXX

Kuei woke up with a splitting head ache and a very full bladder. It was much too early to be getting up but he had no choice, he really had to pee. It had been a late night, or really a very early morning before the party finally broke up and the band had finally crashed in the common room of the inn. The disguised monarch looked at the frost covered window through the fog of his breath. The large fire had burned down and the room was now freezing cold. At least he didn't have to dress, having gone to sleep on a bench with all his clothes on and a cloak wrapped around him.

With a quiet groan the young king rolled off the bench and stumbled to the back door. His mouth tasted like something had crawled in and died in it. At least he hadn't thrown up last night. He opened the door and shuffled to the outhouse behind the inn. On his way his dulled brain registered that there was someone else in the small open area behind the inn. The monarch ducked into the privy and relieved himself. One good thing about freezing mornings was the stench of the outhouse was suppressed.

Once finished Kuei left the privy and looked to see who else was up at such a ridiculous hour. It was the Water Tribe Warrior, practicing with his sword, sheathed in a cloud of breath created fog. There were three of the village children watching him. The two boys were sitting on the edge of the back porch. The young girl had a stick in her hands and was trying to copy the movements of the swordsman.

The tall thin man ran back into the inn and to the common room, with some hurried searching and a few curses from the rest of the band for all the noise, the erstwhile musician found the sword he had received the previous day and hurried back out to the rear of the inn, his head ache, his lack of sleep, even the taste in his mouth forgotten.

XXX

The king was embarrassed. He was already huffing and puffing and the little girl, he had found out her name was Kun-Sun, and that she was about ten or eleven, wasn't even breathing hard yet. Also she was much better at copying the dark skinned swordsman then the monarch was. The curved sword in the thin man's hands was just so much dead weight, unlike the sword in the warrior's hands. The long straight jian was a living thing that flew and whistled through the air at the whim of the fifteen year old. Half the time the thin man couldn't even see the blade as it moved.

After a particularly complex form that Kuei had just given up on and that little Kun was still trying to work out the last part the teen age swordsman broke his stance and approached his two new students. The little girl bowed formally to her sifu. The monarch quickly followed the senior student in the bow.

"I'm not a teacher." The young man admonished them, after returning the bow. "I don't know enough to be able to teach anyone. I'm just a student myself."

"Yes teacher." Kun replied, bowing. "Forgive me for disturbing your training."

"Yes teacher." Kuei said bowing, he was still learning from the little girl and was always a little behind her in everything.

"I'm not a teacher." The tribesman explained.

"Yes teacher." The little girl said bowing even lower, followed a second later by the king. "I know that I am not worthy to be your student, I only hoped that I might watch you for a time."

"Me too, teacher." Kuei said bowing low.

"Ah… crap!" The swordsman said, returning the bow. "All right, the first thing is foot work, it is the foundation on which you will build the road that is your way of the sword."

Sokka's first, of all the innumerable classes he would teach, lasted a little over an hour.

XXX

Toph was in their room practicing her bending with her boots on. She was determined not to let a few finger widths of leather and felt prevent her from using her element. She had been at it for over an hour now. It had been slow going at first but she was getting the feel for it now. She could sense the inn and most of the people on the ground floor. She could even sense the tall young man coming down the hall towards their room. It had to be Sokka, no one else had feet that big.

The young bender felt her face grow hot as she remembered what she had said to him last night. Her only hope was that he would not remember the dream, and if he did that he would think her response was part of the dream.

"Hey Toph." The young man said as he entered the room.

"Hey meathead." The blind woman replied with a wave, turning away from her friend to hide the hot blush, as she returned to her bending forms.

The tribesman watched for a time, finally put the boots and the bending together in a coherent theory and tested his hypothesis.

"How's the bending in boots going?"

"Good." The twelve year old replied, stomping her foot and launching the young man a short distance across the room with an earth pillar.

Toph knew she was safe. If the young man had remembered her telling him that she loved him, he would have made a snarky comment by now, probably more than one.

"Not bad." The swordsman commented from where he was sprawled on the floor.

As Toph continued with her forms, Sokka went to his pack and pulled out his rolled up writing desk.

"There's hot tea and the inn keeper said they could make us breakfast any time." The tribesman reported.

"I'll meet you out there." The young woman replied. "I've got this one form I want to get before I quit."

"Sounds good." The swordsman said as he went to the door.

The teenager stopped at the door and tapped the leather role against his thigh for a few seconds, finally he turned and asked his friend,

"So Toph… do you want to go north or south today?"

"Gaoling is south of here right?" The small bender asked, with a little irritation, at being interrupted again, evident in her tone."

"Yeah." The fifteen year old answered.

"Well south then." The green eyed woman told him.

"Great!" The young man said as he opened the door and left the room.

_Is he humming again? _The young bender asked herself, but then she decided that wasn't important and went back to practicing her bender_._

XXX

"So Chong, heading north today right?" The water tribesman asked smiling.

"Yeah man… we're way behind and have to try and catch up our friends." The musician answered.

"Well, have a good trip then." The teenager told the nomad with a smile.

As Sokka began to turn away, he was stopped as a finger touched the ring in his left ear.

"This is new." A woman's voice said.

The tribesman turned back to see Lily standing by her husband.

"Yeah." The teenager told her, self-consciously touching the gold ring. "It was a gift from a friend."

"Ohhh?" The woman asked with a little smile. "A female friend."

"What? No, his name was Zoltan. Mirela gave hers to Toph." The dark skinned teen explained.

"Whoa! You know Zoltan, man!" Chong said, as he pointed to the young man while leaning back, on his heels.

"They made you friends of the Travelers." Lily stated with a wide grin, while touching one of the many piercings in her own ear.

"Yeah." The young man replied, with a shy grin, while fingering the ring.

"Too cool!" The head of the nomads stated. "Where did you run into Zoltan and his household?"

"A town on the other side of the mountains." The tribesman explained. "There was a festival there. When we left they were heading north for My Lot. That was about four days ago."

"We may be able to catch them if we really hurry." The woman told her husband.

"Hey babe." Chong told his wife, while throwing an arm around her shoulders. "No worries, we'll see them when we see them. It's all karma babe."

Lily just rolled her eyes at the dark skinned teen and smiled.

XXXX

Sokka had finished the letters he had been working on, and pulled a fresh sheet of paper out onto the table. He stared at the blank sheet for a moment, then he closed his eyes and called up an image from nearly a month ago, using the techniques taught to him by his sifu.

Once he had the image set in his mind, he opened his eyes and began to sketch it.

XXXX

Sokka was still working on the sketch when Toph came into the common room. He was so focused on his task that he did not notice his friend until she leaned over his shoulder, he face next to his, as she "looked" down onto the drawing.

"You really have a gift Meathead." The young bender said, admiration evident in her tone.

The young man was distracted by the warm body pressed up against his back, especially the two soft globes resting on his shoulder blade, his response was a little delayed.

"Thanks Toph." The teen finally got out. "Glad you like it. Ahhh, crap! You got me again."

The small bender gave a nasty little giggle as she moved to the other side of the table and sat down.

Sokka poured her some tea, he then went back to studying the sketch. The drawing depicted the leader of the slavers standing in the desert. There was a dark mark on his forehead. In a corner of the paper the tribesman had drawn a closer view of the sand bender. The dark mark was more detailed.

"What's the drawing?" Toph asked sipping her tea.

"The answer to a mystery." The young man replied. "I now know who the Black Lotus is."

"Who?" The young earth bender asked.

"The brother of the Painted Lady." The tribesman answered.

"What?" Toph asked.

"I'll explain after breakfast." Sokka told her.

XXXXX

"All right, this is for First Sergeant Lee." The swordsman said handing a scroll to the disguised monarch. "He's a good man but I don't mention your special circumstances. I do ask him to expedite your travel north to My Lot."

"This is for First Sergeant Minh." The dark teen said handing over another scroll. "This one explains who you really are and asks her to get you to Ba Sing Se as quickly as she can."

"I'm still not sure if I want to go back to the city." Kuei said, while accepting the letters.

"Well you don't have to use them." The young man said. "But now you at least have that choice."

The dark skinned man bowed to the thin man, who returned the bow.

"Have a good journey." The tribesman said.

"And you." The musician said.

Sokka turned from the monarch and stepped over to the Yun Hee. Toph took the opportunity to approach Kuei.

"There's something you should know about sergeant Minh." The small earthbender said in a hushed tone.

"Oh really?" Kuei asked, the concern evident in his voice.

The two stepped a short distance away in quiet conversation.

The swordsman bowed to the sad eyed woman, then handed her a letter.

"This is a letter of introduction." He explained. "It's for the 'Real Lee' who lives in the first big town on the other side of the mountains. His address is here..." The swordsman pointed to the outside of the scroll. "... Lee will get you a place to stay and will get you a good job, and set you up with a good midwife. You can't miss him. He's this fat old man with a bushy white beard. A real sweet heart."

"I don't have much money." Yun Hee began to protest, but was stopped by the young man.

"That's all taken care of, I left instruction in the letter about paying for everything." He explained.

"I... Thank you." The sad eyed young woman said, taking the letter and bowing deeply to the young man.

"It is my honor to be of some small help to one who was so brave." The dark skinned man replied, giving his own deep bow.

"One last thing." The tribesman said pulling a last smaller scroll from his bag. "You asked for the mark of the Black Lotus. Here is a stamp of the mark I made. Give it to Lilly and she will be able to paint it on your chest."

Yun Hee accepted the piece of paper. On it, in black ink, was a perfect impression of a lotus blossom.

"Thank you again." The young woman replied putting the scroll away in her own bag.

* * *

Sokka and Toph waved to the nomads and the villagers, then turning, they walked down the southern road to Gaoling, hand in hand.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Yes I know. Two and a half months and this is all I can give you.

I am very sorry for the insane delay in getting this chapter up. As some of you may have guessed my wife is directing another play. She had an opportunity to direct "A Mid Summer Night's Dream" and she could not pass it up. The show opens the 19th so my time should open up after that, and I hope to get back on the two week schedule again.

Sorry I'm not going to respond to reviewers in these notes just to get the chapter up. I will answer them in the next chapter.

I hope the chapter isn't too bad. I did get some fluff in there for you.

Thanks so much for reading.

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More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	48. Chapter 48

I'll Walk You Home pt. 48

Chapter 16

pt. 1

Hay on Wye

* * *

"You can't be the 'Black Lotus'..." Jiro said, pulling Kee over to where he should be standing as the big fire bender. "You're too big. The Black Lotus is tall not big."

"But I'm a earthbender not a fire bender." The older boy protested.

"That doesn't matter." Jiro explained. "What's important is that you are the biggest."

"Oh, ok." Kee acquiesced.

The other children of the village usually agreed with Jiro, since he came up with the best games, even if he was a little bossy about it.

The ten year old took his own place in the game. Jiro, even though he was an earthbender himself, was going to be the earth army deserter. He looked over to Chihiro, who was standing nearby looking bored. She always looked bored, but Jiro thought she was the prettiest of all the village girls, and even though she was too tall really to be a perfect Yun-Hee, he was looking forward to being beaten to death by her.

"He is tall." Chihiro said, looking up the ancient road.

Jiro turned and following her eyes saw the tall man dressed all in black and the small woman dressed in white, _well dirty white, maybe tan actually, but it could have just been travel dust, _walking into the village from the north.

The fishermen who had come through the village yesterday on their way home, and then the others who had come through earlier that morning had described the couple to all who would listen. And here they were, the Black Lotus and the Blind Queen walking hand in hand into the ten year old's own little village of Pien-Pen. Jiro ran all the way to the road.

"Be careful." Little Minoo warned, taking Jiro's hand, she was the one who was to be the Blind Queen in the game. "He kills earthbenders."

"Not just sandbenders." Chihiro corrected the smaller girl while taking the ten year old's other hand. "The Black Lotus kills bad benders, the element doesn't matter. Jiro is good so he doesn't have to worry."

Jiro felt a huge smile come onto his face as he felt the girls' hands in his own. The grin was soon followed by a hot blush.

"The Blind Queen is an earthbender..." The bored girl explained. "... and he loves her."

"That's true!" Jiro agreed quickly, while giving Chihiro's hand a little squeeze.

The children watched in silence as the young couple approached, and when they were close enough, Jiro gave the command.

"Now!"

* * *

Sokka had been eyeing the group of children by the side of the ancient road. He wasn't sure what they wanted, standing all in a line and holding hands. When they all bowed in unison he was surprised and was about to stop and return the bow when he felt Toph pull on his hand.

"Just keep walking and nod to them." The earthbender told him in a low voice.

The tribesman did as he was told and the couple nodded to the youngsters as they walked past.

"That was weird." The dark skinned teen observed as they continued on into the village.

"They're just fans." The young woman told him. "Kids used to do that at the Earth Rumbles, they'd line up and bow when their heroes would walk by."

"But Gaoling is still a few days away." The young man said in a thoughtful tone. "I wouldn't think that you had fans this far north, at least not fans that could recognize you."

Toph laughed at that and squeezed his hand.

"You know…" She said with a smile. "…For the smartest guy in the world you are a complete idiot."

"Thanks!" The tribesman replied.

Sokka tugged the small earthbender towards him and with his free hand pushed her hat down over her eyes. He received a hard punch to his upper arm in reply. That's when he remembered that pushing her hat down had no effect on his friend. _I really am an idiot! _He thought.

Grinning Toph pushed her hat back up onto her head, and then dropped her left hand to her side, and covertly shook it to try and relieve the pins and needles she was feeling in it. Meathead's arm really was a lot harder than it used to be.

* * *

The two ate lunch in the village, a soup rich in long round noodles and with plenty of pieces of fresh fish, and then continued down the ancient road.

The road continued south following the river which grew as it descended down out of the mountains. New streams cut across the valleys and joined the river but all the bridges that crossed both the streams and the river were in good repair, and the two had no problems crossing them.

They passed through one more village before finally deciding to set up camp in a wooded valley. They could have stayed in the last village, but they both decided, for their own reasons, that they would rather not share each other with an inn full of people.

Sokka set up the camp well off the road in a clearing by a small brook. Toph pulled up an earth tent for the two to sleep in since the evening was already turning cold as the sun fell below the crest of the western mountains.

The tribesman sat with his feet by the dying fire, leaning against the stone hard side of the tent, his unrolled writing desk in his lap. He was working on a letter to his sister.

_Hey, guess what?_ He wrote. _Toph likes me! Hard to believe, I know! That the great Toph would like a useless non-bender like me. You could say that she has fallen in like with me. It must be my manly charms, or it could be that I do all the cooking and cleaning and washing. That's why all those boys like you! I just figured that out! You should have told me that a long time ago and I would have been doing it all along ha ha! Just kidding! Talking about kids how is Aang doing? Ha ha, just kidding again. Hope he is having fun with all his meetings._

Toph took that moment to plop down by the teen and stretch her feet out towards the fire.

"What 'cha doin'?" She asked elbowing him in the side.

Sokka quickly closed the leather role, before he realized that he didn't need to cover up the letter, his friend couldn't see it anyway.

"Just writing a letter to Katara." He replied.

"Telling her about how you've been rescuing villages from evil benders?" The woman asked, shifting up against his side.

"Naw…" The young man told her, putting away his writing things. "I was writing about important things."

The small bender snaked her arm around his and pulled herself closer, leaning her head on his shoulder and interlacing her fingers with his. The two sat quietly for a time, one watching the fire die down, the other listening to the woods around them.

"So we're close to Gaoling?" The listener finally asked.

"Ah yeah…" The watcher replied collecting his thoughts. "We should be there in maybe three days."

"Three days." The smaller said with a small sigh.

"Yeah." The larger agreed with a sigh of his own. "I'll miss this, just the two of us, out here, in the quiet."

The young woman squeezed his hand in answer. The young man laid his head on top of hers in response. The two just sat and listened to the sound of the fire as it died down, the wind in the trees, the water in the nearby brook, and their own quiet breathing in the fading light.

Eventually, with a squeeze of her hand and a kiss to the top of her head, the young man convinced the young woman that it was time to crawl into the tent and get some sleep. Reluctantly the two got up onto their feet. The woman moved to the open end of the stone hut shaped like a simple tent and began to undress. The tent itself was too cramped for anything other than lying down, even the small earthbender couldn't stand up in it.

The young man began to police up the campsite, putting away the cooking gear and covering the coals of the fire with dirt.

Toph had carefully folded her outer clothes and arranged them on her side of the tent so she could find them easily the next morning. She untied the long fall of hair down her back then stood for a moment scratching her head. It felt good, and she was using both hands and scratching vigorously when her friend walked up to the tent.

"Did you brush your hair?" The tribesman asked standing behind her.

"No." She finally replied, stopping her scratching.

"You should brush it every night." The young man admonished her, as he ran his fingers through his own messy head, pulling the tie off of his wolf tail.

"You don't brush yours." The earthbender declared in defense.

"Every morning, well maybe not brush but I at least comb it." The tribesman explained. "Come on, sit down and I'll brush it for you."

The blind woman made a low growl in response to his request.

"Come on." He cajoled, sitting behind her in by the open end of the tent. It'll only take a minute."

"I don't have a brush." The young woman answered in self-satisfaction.

"No problem." The young man said reaching around the bender and pulling out one of his shoulder bags from the tent. "I got this for you at the fair."

After searching for a while in the duffle the tribesman pulled out a small cloth oblong bag. Untying the draw string he pulled out a wooden handled brush that smelled of lavender.

"Sit!" The swordsman commanded spreading his legs for his companion.

Grumbling the whole time Toph eventually sat down between, the young man's legs. She could feel his large hands gently collect her long black hair down behind her back. Then she felt the soft bristles of the brush move over her head and through her hair. She would never admit it but it did feel good.

Toph sat there, feeling the gentle touch of the young man's hands on her head and neck, and the soft tug of the brush, the fingers of her right hand found the jade coin hanging at her throat, her thumb finding the etching of the boomerang on the back.

"Once we get home you have to leave?" The bender asked.

"Yeah… Got to raise the fleet." The fifteen year old replied, still working on her hair.

Sokka loved Toph's hair. It was beautiful, and silky in his hands as he brushed it in the dark. He had put crushed lavender blossoms in the bag that had come with the brush, which had transferred their aroma to the bristles which now moved onto her hair, making it soft and shiny in the moon light. He just wanted to bury his face in the luxurious length.

"So three days…" The blind woman sighed.

"What?" The young man asked, distractedly.

"You'll be leaving in three days." The bender stated.

"Oh no!" The tribesman explained. "I won't have to meet dad for a while. I wrote to him telling of the change in plans. I'm hoping there'll be a letter from him at your folks place. It will probably be a week or two before I have to leave."

"Everyone is depending on you I guess?" The earthbender asked sadly.

"Well yeah." The water tribe teen told her, running the brush through her hair in long gentle strokes. "The tribe needs the fleet so they can hunt and fish and it was my idea to scuttle it to fool the fire navy, and it is my plan on how to raise it, so I really should be there."

"But you'll come back some time?" Toph asked, rubbing the boomerang on the coin.

"Of course!" The tribesman stated with surety. "After I help raise the fleet and then salvage the airships for Zuko, I'll come back and see you. I… you're… after all you're my best friend, I'll always come back and hang out with you."

"I forgot about the air fleet." The young woman sighed. "How long will that take."

"I don't know, maybe a couple of months." The dark skinned teen said, sadness and longing mixed in his voice. "I have to pay Zuko back for his help with raising the Water Tribe Fleet, he's loaning us ships and men to help. And he has a really hard job trying to turn the Fire Nation into a peaceful member of the world. I have to help him if I can."

"Of course." The small woman agreed. "Everybody needs you."

"Nobody needs me Toph." The tribesman explained, a little sadness entering his voice. "I'm just the only one who doesn't have anything better to do."

Toph didn't think that was true. She needed Sokka. She needed him to make her smile as he took her hand in his. She needed him to make her laugh with his terrible jokes. She needed him to brush her hair, and scratch her back, and make her heart leap wildly in her chest. She needed him every minute of every hour, for the rest of her life.

"All done!" The young man declared. "See it wasn't so bad. And your hair looks really nice now."

The tribesman cleaned the brush, returned it to its carrying bag and tapping his friend's arm handed it to her.

"Thanks." The twelve year old replied, taking the bundle and putting it in her lap.

She noticed that her head didn't itch any more, though there was a small tickle starting down between her legs, but she ignored it.

"Let me braid your hair." The teenager offered. "It won't be such a mess in the morning."

Toph thought for a second then reluctantly said,

"Ok."

The earthbender didn't like to have people doing things for her, but she did not know how to braid her hair, and besides this was Sokka offering, he always made everything different.

She felt him divide her hair up into three equal sections.

"Where did you learn so much about hair?" She asked him.

"Well, in case you haven't noticed my sister is very particular about her hair and I had to help her a few times over the years." The young man explained trying to remember the way to start and the pattern to weave the three falls in.

After a couple of false starts the teen remembered and wove the young bender's hair into a long loose braid down her back.

"I don't want any hair loopies." The metal bender declared.

"No problem." The water tribesman answered. "Though I think they would look good on you. They would uncover your pretty eyes and frame your lovely face."

Toph's right hand went back to the coin at her throat, and began to stroke it again.

Sokka finished the braid. He needed something to tie off the end and not knowing where the young woman had put her ribbon he pulled out his own hair tie and used it to secure the end.

"There you go." The tribesman said laying the long plait of hair over the green eyed woman's right shoulder.

The earthbender released her hold on her pendant and grabbed the braid.

"Thanks." She told her friend.

Sokka ran his nails up and down the small woman's back a few times. Toph sat up arching herself slightly to give him more access and area to scratch while letting a small hum of enjoyment escape her lips. After running his hands over her tunic covered back the young man just let them come to rest on her shoulders. He leaned forward and gave a light kiss to the small area between the girl's hair line and the collar of her top.

"It's getting cold." He stated. "We should get in under the covers."

The young woman did not feel cold. She felt warm and wonderful, her heart skipping about in her chest, but she slid, feet first, into the tent anyway.

Once she got onto her sleeping mat, which rested on top of the heavy cloak they used as a ground cloth, the earthbender put the brush in its travel bag into the duffle that had her dancing clothes and jewelry. She then pulled the blanket over herself. She reached down and as covertly as she could she pulled her shorts, and the loin cloth under them, down where they had ridden up as she had slid into the tent. Once she was finished she reached up to pull her tunic down where it had bunched up under her small breasts, exposing her stomach and back. She was interrupted by the dark skinned teen sliding into the tent next to her.

Sokka held onto the apex of the two slabs of earth that made up the tent and swung himself half way into the tent, his feet pushing the blanket down towards the far end of the small structure. Toph felt the cover move and grabbed onto it, yanking it back up to cover herself. The tribesman hung their two coats over the open end of the shelter blocking out the cold night air and the faint light of the star lit sky. He then pushed himself the rest of the way into the tent.

The shelter was small and crowded with all their packs and supplies, and was now as dark as the inside of the young man's boot, with his foot in it. As he shifted himself in and tried to pull the blanket up he kept making contact with the young woman lying on her back next to him.

"Sorry." The teen apologized. "Can't see a thing in here."

"Oh no!" The blind woman cried in mock terror. "What a nightmare! What will you do?"

"This!" The young man answered, his hand snaking out and finding the young earthbender.

Sokka knew where Toph was in the cramped space and the fingers of his right hand slid skittering along her (Much to his surprise and pleasure) bare stomach, which caused the twelve year old to squawk in protest as her skin, and then her whole body jumped at the contact. The green eyed woman rolled onto her side and retaliated in like manner, but to little effect, since the tribesman was not anywhere near as ticklish as the young woman was. The two wrestled for a bit. Toph grabbing Sokka's wrists, which he easily freed using his hand to hand combat training.

Soon enough the two quieted. The young woman's head pillowed on the heavy muscle of the teen's upper left arm. Her face snuggled into his neck. Her hands exploring the warm skin of his chest and stomach. Her leg comfortably sliding between his. His cheek resting on the side of her head. His strong right hand stroking up and down her half bare back.

"I wish." The fifteen year old sighed.

"I wish." The twelve year old answered.

Too soon Toph felt Sokka kiss the side of her head, then his face slid down next to hers and their noses made contact and she rubbed hers against his.

"Night Toph." The young man said.

"Night Sokka." The young woman replied.

* * *

Toph woke up. She was fairly sure it was too early to be awake but something must have woken her. She was lying face down under the blanket on something funny. It was much warmer and nicer than her sleeping mat. Whatever she was lying on was much lumpier than the ground and was moving slowly up and down, but it was still more comfortable than the hard earth. She used her hands to explore the something.

The blind woman's hands found a lot of smooth skin, with a lot of strong muscle under it. She found ribs and sliding her hands higher found more muscle and two nipples. They seemed familiar to her touch. As she explored them she heard a small hum come from somewhere above the nipples and a large hand slid onto her left arm and followed it back to her shoulder and then onto her head, where it gently stroked her hair.

The earthbender stopped her exploration and lay quietly for a moment, thinking. She was lying on top of Sokka. He was the something. Well half of her was. The lower half of her was between the young tribesman's legs. She noticed that her chin was wet. She must have drooled onto her companion's chest while she was sleeping. Not her finest moment. She wondered what had woken her. It was not a dream she was sure of that, she had not been having one. And the young man under her did not seem to be dreaming, though he was still stroking her head.

The young woman decided she did not want to be found by the young man with a puddle of her drool on his stomach. He would never let her live that down. She began to shift herself off of the teen but stopped almost immediately. She had felt a sharp painful tug on her belly button when she had moved. _What was that?_ She asked herself. Then it came to her.

The metalbender remembered that she had not pulled her tunic down that night. The bottom of it still bunched up just below her breasts. During the night she must have gotten cold and had crawled onto Meathead to get warm and the stupid chain hanging from her belly piercing, which was no longer covered by her under tunic, must have gotten caught on something. Well someone actually. Probably on his loin cloth, judging from their relative positions. When one of them had moved as they slept, the painful tug must have woken her up.

_This is simple._ Toph thought. All she had to do was reach between the two of them and unhook the chain and she would be free. She slid her right hand down the young man's side until it was on his hip. Then she slid it in towards her stomach. She shifted her weight onto her left side rolling her right side up as far as she could till the chain stopped her. There was very little room between her stomach and the tribesman's abdomen, but she slipped her hand, as best she could, towards where the chain was caught on his loin cloth.

It was very tight and the bender could feel her fingers pushing between her stomach and the warrior's as she tried to work them to the trouble spot, which was on his right side, her left, of the boy's one piece of clothing. If she could only touch the chain she should be able to metal bend it. _Fuck!_ She suddenly thought. Lowering herself down on the young man again, trapping her hand between them. She was not going to be able to use her metal bending. The chain was gold, pure gold according to the salesman. She could not bend pure gold. It was the impurities in the metal that she used for her bending. Just as she had needed to use the cheapest, the most impure, silver bangles that Mirela had in order to bend them, she would only be able to use her bending on cheap, low quality gold.

Toph lifted her stomach off of Snoozles again and moved her hand towards the chain. She would have to do this the hard way. As she lifted up she felt something move under her. _What is that?_ As she moved her hand she felt the something move again. It seemed to be shifting up, and was it getting bigger too. This was too weird.

The young woman knew that Sokka would let Momo crawl around inside his clothes looking for treats that he would hide there for the lemur. The teen thought it was cute and funny. Did the idiot also have some sort of animal crawling around in his loin cloth? Toph stopped moving. There was definitely something down there. She could feel it shifting and growing between her abdomen and Meathead's.

_Growing?_ The bender asked herself. _What the fuck is going on down there?_

Toph continued to try and get her hand to the place where she was caught. Every time she shifted her body the creature in Sokka's loin cloth would move too. And it was definitely growing, getting longer and thicker each time it moved. _It must be some kind of snake or lizard._ The blind woman thought as she felt it begin to press against her stomach. Every time the animal shifted it moved up and straightened, soon it would be under the spot where the chain was caught. If it kept growing it would move past the chain and be between her hand and the place she needed to get too.

The young woman kept trying to get her fingers on the chain, wiggling them between the tribesman's muscular abdomen and her own stomach. Even if she could just get a hold of the chain she could pull herself free without tearing the piercing out of her navel. The snake kept shifting and growing. Soon she would have to push it out of the way if she was going to get to the chain. She wondered if it was dangerous. _What if it bites?_ She asked herself. Or worse yet, _what if it's venomous?_

"Oh… Toph…." Sokka moaned in his sleep.

_Great!_ The bender thought. Meathead is having a dream, one he seemed to be enjoying too. She felt the young man's hand begin to stroke her head again. It was soon joined by his other hand which began to stroke her neck and shoulder. Any other time and the young woman would have enjoyed the caresses of the strong hands, but right now it was just making it difficult to concentrate on what she had to do to free herself.

The earthbender continued to squeeze her hand between the tribesman's body and her own wiggling her fingers trying to feel for the chain, she thought she was getting close. This resulted in two reactions one somewhat expected and the other not so much. The loin cloth creature shifted, becoming even longer, thicker and straighter. Toph had rather expected that, when her hand got to it she would just push it out of the way.

The second, more surprising reaction came from Sokka.

"Oh yeah…" The young man moaned. "Yeah Toph… yeah…"

That part wasn't so bad it was what the warrior did with his hands that started to cause the young woman problems. She felt the caresses become a little stronger and then she felt his hands start to try and push her farther down his body. It was light at first but became stronger and stronger with each moan from the muscular young man.

"Oh Toph…" The blued eyed teen moaned pushing against the small bender's head.

It got worse when the fifteen year old began to move his legs and shift his hips. _OW!_ The movement was starting to put a strain on the chain and by normal mechanical means on the poor girl's belly button. She was going to have to do something and fast.

"Please Toph…" The young man moaned in his sleep as he continued to push against her head and shoulder.

The green eyed woman had to wake the Idiot up. No matter how embarrassing this was if she was going to save her belly button she had to stop him moving. With her free hand she poked him in the side.

"Snoozles! Wake up!" The bender commanded.

"Please Toph." The young man begged in his dream, pushing her father down as he moved his hips under her. "I promise I'll do you next."

_OW!_ It was really starting to hurt. The bender was getting desperate. She poked her friend in the side again, much harder this time.

"SNOOZLES!" She shouted. "COMBUSTION MAN FOUND US, AGAIN!"

Sokka's hands shot to his weapons as he sat up in bed.

"NO!" Toph shouted as she felt the pull on her piercing increase with the movement.

There was a dull thunk from above her as the young man's forehead smashed into the low stone hard roof of the tent. Sokka fell back down onto his back and lay there quietly.

_Ok! That works too!_ The young woman thought. She shifted herself to ease the strain on her navel. It seemed that the creature had also quieted down, having shrunk in thickness and length. _Good!_ She thought as she began to work her hand towards the chain again. It was much too good to last though.

"Owwww…." The young man moaned.

Toph stopped moving.

"What happened?" The tribesman asked.

"Just a dream." The bender answered. "Go back to sleep."

"My head really hurts." The young man told her, rubbing the rapidly forming bump on his forehead.

"Go to sleep Snoozles!" The woman commanded.

"Toph, what are you doing?" The teen asked.

"Nothing!" She replied, trying to bluff her way through. "Go back to sleep."

In the absolute darkness of the tent he had no visual cues to help him and was having to go with just what he could feel, and what he could feel was not "nothing".

"Toph stop!" The young man ordered in a strained voice.

_Crap!_ The young woman thought. She was going to have to tell him what had happened which was going to be embarrassing.

"Sokka, my stomach chain is caught on your loin cloth and I have to get it lose." The bender said in a quiet and unhappy voice.

"What?" The teen asked.

"I'm caught! Ok!" She gave an exasperated sigh. "Just give me a second and I think I can free us."

Toph started moving her hand towards the chain again. Then having a thought she put her forehead onto the boy's chest and lifting her stomach as much as she could, pushed both hands between the two of them to reach the chain. Of course the thing in Sokka's loin cloth chose that moment to come back to life, shifting and growing again. It was now pointing straight up the tribesman's stomach and getting longer and thicker by the second.

"Toph!" The boy said shock evident in his voice.

"You know you have a snake or lizard or something in your clothes?" The bender stated the obvious. "Is that like a water tribe custom or something? Like a way of staying warm?"

She continued to try to squeeze her hands between the two bodies.

"Toph stop!" The warrior ordered, obviously very agitated. "Get your hands out of there."

Sokka could feel the woman's hands moving across his abdomen, they were not the problem. The problem was what the tactile sensations were doing to his body, not just his body but to a particular part of his body. Blood rushed to his face as he felt the two hands moving to join right were his growing problem was situated.

"Is it dangerous?" The small woman asked in fear, stopping her movement. "Does it bite?"

"Does what bite?" The tribesman asked in reply, obviously frustrated and embarrassed by their current situation.

"The thing in your pants!" Toph answered letting her own frustration come through.

"You're kidding right?" The fifteen year old asked.

"No!" The twelve year old answered in anger.

"No! It doesn't bite!" The boy sarcastically replied.

"Well then I'll just grab it and throw it out of the tent." The young woman said. "It's starting to creep me out, the way it keeps changing."

"DON'T TOUCH IT!" The boy shouted, sitting up again.

"NO!" Toph shouted.

There was another thunk followed by a thump as the boy's back hit the ground.

"Owwww…." The teen moaned holding his head.

"Ok! Ok!" Toph said in a reasonable tone, trying to calm her friend down.

The small woman pulled her hands out from between the two of them, and lowered herself back down onto the young man. She felt the creature in his pants react to the increased contact by growing again. It was now a long, thick, hard, and pulsing presence between the tribesman and herself.

"Errrrghhhh!" The fifteen year old moaned.

"Are you ok?" The blind woman asked, actually concerned for her companion.

"NO!" Sokka screamed. "Owww…"

The screaming really hurt his head right now.

"Sorry for asking." Toph replied not sorry in the least.

The blind woman squirmed a little to ease more of the strain on her piercing.

"Nooooo…" The boy moaned. "Please don't move."

"It hurts, I'm just trying to get comfortable. Is that ok?" The blind woman asked with a scathing voice.

"Sorry…" The young man replied in genuine apology, though his voice betrayed that he was under a lot of stress.

Toph felt the tribesman take a deep calming breath, which caused her to rise and fall with his body. She actually kind of enjoyed the feeling, or would have if not for the silly predicament she was in at the moment. She shifted again to a more comfortable position. The creature in Sokka's loin cloth was really becoming uncomfortable. It was huge and hard and pressing it's length into her stomach as it swelled. Even through the various layers of cloth between the creature and herself it was impossible to ignore.

"What is that thing?" She finally asked, curiosity overcoming irritation. "Is it a special pet or something from the South Pole?"

"It's not a pet." The young man told her trying to remain calm.

"What is it then? Is it like a puffer fish?" The twelve year old asked.

"It's my…" Sokka desperately searched his aching mind for a euphemism but the strain was too great and finally he just blurted out the first word he could think of. "… Thing Ok?"

This was just an awful situation and the tribesman was beyond embarrassed. He felt a vast amount of blood rush to his face. The only bright side he could think of in the situation was that the intense blush he was suffering might help alleviate his other problem, but alas that was not to be.

"Your thing?" Toph asked, in genuine confusion. "What thing? What are you talking about?"

Sokka tried to think of something to say but he was coming up empty. He couldn't even think of the proper word to use and finally as his embarrassment and frustration reached a peak he shouted out.

"It's my DICK, ok? You happy now!"

"Your dick?" The woman asked, puzzled.

"Yeah my dick!" The young man answered, feeling badgered.

"As in 'Guys have dicks…'?" The blind bender asked.

"Yeah." He answered, giving up and just sighing.

Toph thought about this for a moment. She could feel the huge thing under her. The way it was pushing against her it had to be really hard, and stiff. Even with just her earthbending sense she would have noticed something this big attached to her friend. This did not make any sense. Then she figured it out.

"So where do you normally keep it?" The woman asked in genuine interest, then in a helpful tone suggested, "I could pull it off for you if you wanted, just to get it out of the way."

"Don't…" The boy screeched, but then got control of himself and continued, "You can't…"

The fifteen year old stopped speaking thinking that telling the pretty girl that she couldn't 'pull his dick off' would sound really wrong, and he was desperately searching for another phrase.

"Detach it." He finally told her.

"Come on!" She responded, disbelief very evident in her voice. "If you had this huge hard thing in your pants all this time, even blind, I would have noticed. You have to be able to get it off somehow, let me help."

"It doesn't… detach. Ok!" The young man told her trying to keep his voice calm but failing. "And it's not huge, it's perfectly normal."

"It's enormous!" The girl insisted.

"Just don't do anything!" The teen commanded.

"So what?" The blind girl asked. "We're just going to be stuck like this forever?"

"Give me a second to think?" The boy pleaded.

"It's all yours plan guy." The bender replied, wriggling her hips into a more comfortable position.

"Errrghhh…" The fifteen year old groaned.

"What a pussy." The twelve year old said under her breath.

Toph was finally comfortable, except for the gigantic hard thing pushing against her stomach, so she pulled her hands up onto her companion's chest, and used them to pillow her face as she just tried to relax and enjoy being lifted and lowered by the young man as he breathed. She found it very pleasant.

The bender heard and felt movement from her friend.

"What are you doing?" She asked drowsily.

"Getting my knife." He explained.

"So you're going to cut your dick off?" She asked absently. "Wouldn't it be easier if I just reached down and jerked it off for you?"

"No!" The boy declared. "Just don't move."

"Just trying to help." She grumpily replied. "Not moving."

Now that the piercing was no longer pulling on her belly button the young woman was comfortable under the blanket, rising and falling as the young man breathed. She tried not to move as she felt sleep starting to come over her, though she squirmed just a little because of the enormous hard thing.

Sokka reached down along his right side. It was awkward trying to do this with only one hand but the young woman on top of him kept him from using his left hand to help him. Holding the knife with his fingers he ran his thumb down his side till he found the waist band of his loin cloth. Carefully, since he couldn't see in the darkness of the tent, and he had to do it all by touch, he got the blade under the side of the waist band and cut through it. He set the knife down out of the way. This trip had been hell on loin cloths.

"Ok… Toph." The young man told the girl lying on top of him. "I have to lift my hips off the ground and that will free my loin cloth so you should be able to just roll off of me with no trouble. The cloth will still be attached to you but not to me."

"Ok." The bender said raising her head, and wiping the drool from her chin.

The tribesman arched his back pushing his hips and his companion up off of the ground. The cut belt fell away freeing the cloth that actually ran down his butt, through his groin and up the front.

"Ok." He told his friend. "Grab the cloth and roll onto the other side of the tent."

Toph could feel the cloth come loose, she could also feel her friend's long, thick, hard thing push into her stomach even harder, now that she was suspended on his groin. She reached down and grabbed the cloth with her left hand, avoiding contact with the boy's 'pet', and using her right hand to catch her, she was able to roll off of the young man and onto her sleeping mat, taking the blanket with her.

The two lay there just breathing. Then Toph realized she was still attached to a long piece of cloth.

"Can you get this thing off me?" She requested.

The young man stopped rubbing the growing lumps on his head and turned towards his tent mate.

"What thing?" He asked in reply.

"Your yucky pants thing." She told him letting a tinge of disgust enter her voice.

The young bender knew that this was all her fault and really she should be nicer to her companion, but she also knew that blaming him for everything was her best defense against any snark he might want to throw at her.

"Let me get some clothes on." He requested in a reasonable tone.

Sokka found the entire situation very embarrassing. Especially the lying there naked with his thing on display. He had been through this a few times with his sister and his Grandmother and he knew it never ended well for him. Just getting a loin cloth on would make a big difference.

"Just get this off! Now!" The young woman demanded.

"I'm just going to put on a loin cloth." The tribesman explained.

_If I have one left. _He added to himself.

"I've got one for you right here." The bender insisted. "Get it off me before it tears my stomach out."

"Ok, ok" The boy relented.

It was really awkward in the cramped tent for the young man to get into a position where he could work on the girl's stomach. He reached out and found the woman's arm. He followed it to her side and from there to her stomach. His right hand found the loin cloth and the piercing. He brought his left hand and arm up to help him. He felt his forearm slide across something soft and round under the young bender's tunic.

"Sorry." The boy said. "Can't see a thing in here."

"Oh No..." She began but was cut off by the tribesman.

"You want to do this yourself?" He demanded. "Not everybody is a great master earthbender who can see in the dark with their feet."

"Ok, ok" The bender relented.

"Hey!" The young man said as the thought hit him. "No bending my..." _That sounded really wrong._ "No feeling my..." _That sounded even worse. "_No using your bending to... sense my thing_!" _He finally insisted.

She was distracted by the large, strong, gentle hands that were exploring her at that moment. Going totally by touch meant that Sokka had to feel his way to the young woman's navel.

"Of course not!" The young woman retorted in an offended voice, as she quietly moved her legs down and her feet off of the ground.

The teen continued his exploration.

"Sorry." Toph said as she felt her stomach jump under the touch of the dark skinned teen.

Sokka was scrunched up into a ball beside the bender, his face close to the young woman's stomach as he felt the chain and the cloth caught on it.

"Do you need me to push my shorts down?" The small woman asked nervously.

Toph could feel the young man's breath on her bare stomach. His hands were on her bare skin and his forearms lying on her chest and hips respectively. The little tickle down between her legs from earlier that night had returned with a vengeance. It was no longer little and was no longer just a tickle but had now become an all-out itch. It had transformed into a little itchy flame that required rubbing to put it out. _You could ask him to rub it for you!_ She thought, but she immediately rejected the idea. Madam Wang had taught her that you should never touch yourself there unless you absolutely had to, and never in public. Though it was starting to feel like she really was going to have to.

Sokka, who had been having a heated conversation with his lizard brain, had missed the question.

"What?" He asked.

"My shorts, do you need me to untie them?" The woman asked, a little more breathlessly then she had intended.

"What… No, no. Your shorts are fine." The young man replied.

"How about my shirt?" The bender asked taking hold of the bottom of the garment in question, where it was bunched up just under her breasts. "I can take it off if you want."

"No! Your shirt is fine, everything is fine." The fifteen year old told her, in an angry voice he added. "And she most definitely does not need to get naked!"

"What?" Toph asked, she had been having a heated conversation with her lizard brain at that moment and had missed what her friend had said.

"Your fine." The young man said in a calmer tone. "Everything is fine, just don't squirm so much."

"Right!" The girl said.

Toph was finding it very hard not to move. The fiery itch was getting hotter and larger all the time and she was squeezing, and rubbing her legs together to give her some relief. Then there were the sensation coming from her stomach, which was causing her heart to leap about in her chest. And her stomach, the inside one was having a grand time just flopping about.

"Toph, it would probably be easier to just take off your piercing." The tribesman said after exploring where the cloth was caught to the chain, as best he could, just using his sense of touch.

"Ok." The young woman said reaching for the draw string on her shorts.

"Toph, what are you doing?" Sokka asked confused by what he could feel of her actions.

"You said it would be easier if I took off my shorts." The young woman said, her voice distracted and breathy as she untied the knot holding her pants up.

"I said your piercing." The young man explained.

"Oh…" The bender replied.

It was silent in the tent for a few moments.

"So can you take it off?" Sokka finally asked.

In answer Toph reached down and began to push her shorts down her hips.

"No Toph." The tribesman croaked out, he seemed to be having to struggle to get the words out. "The piercing, can you take off the piercing?"

"Oh…" The young woman moved her hands up to the coin around her throat and stroked it absently, she finally admitted. "Well… no. I don't know how to take it off."

"What?" The young man asked confused.

"Well the guy in the shop put it on." Toph explained in an embarrassed tone. "And Laura took it off a couple of times to clean it but she always put it back on and I never learned how it opens and closes. Can't you figure it out?"

"Maybe in daylight." The tribesman sighed. "Ok, just hold still and I'll try to get the cloth off."

Sokka began to explore the point in the chain where the cloth was attached. Even though he could not see anything in the darkness of the tent he unconsciously moved his face closer to the problem. His chin resting on the young woman's tight stomach, his lose hair trailing across her sensitive skin.

"Oooohhh…" Toph sighed.

"Problem?" The non-bender asked.

"No!" The young woman answered, rubbing her legs together.

After a time the young man thought he had figured out what had happened. One of the links in the chain had opened and had caught some of the threads of the loin cloth.

"I think I can get this." He told his friend.

He laid the chain on her stomach, then, using his tongue, he pulled it into his mouth so he could use his teeth to open the link even farther and release the cloth. Toph writhed underneath him as he worked on the chain. He was careful not to put any strain on the piercing, which meant that his mouth was tight up against the young woman's stomach, just below her navel as he worked the soft gold with his tongue, lips, and teeth.

"Sorry." He tried to say, but his voice was badly muffled against the fine skin of her belly.

Toph's hands abandoned her pendant to tangle in the young man's hair.

"That's ok…" She said, it came out as a mixture of sigh, moan, and groan, with a little panting added in as a counter point.

"Got it." Sokka said triumphantly as he pulled the cloth free. "Let me just close the link so it won't happen again."

The young man's mouth descended again to the young woman's belly as he used his lips and tongue to pull the chain back into his teeth.

"Good!" Toph groaned, her fingers still tangled in his hair as she unconsciously pushed his face down onto her stomach.

"That's it." Sokka said against her stomach, releasing the chain.

"Thanks." The bender panted, releasing his head.

The young man lifted himself off of the young woman and carefully got himself onto his back on his side of the tent. He breathed a deep sigh of relief and accomplishment. He told himself that everything was better now. He had a blinding head ach and two growing lumps on his skull, his big problem was still huge and demanding of attention, and he was still naked, but no one was connected to anyone, and he no longer had to be in close personal contact with the beautiful young woman next to him. Just the smell of her skin had been driving him crazy and his lizard brain had been a total pain in the ass the whole time he had been working on the piercing. But now all that was over. He reached up for the clean clothes bag he used for a pillow and began to feel around in it for a new loin cloth.

"So, Sokka…" The bender said as her breathing came back under her control. "Was that really your dick?"

_Ahhhh… Fuck!_ The fifteen year old thought looking up into the blackness of the tent. _Why does the universe hate me?_

"Ah, yeah." The young man said sheepishly, embarrassed by his condition. "That's my dick."

Toph pushed herself up onto her knees, which forced her to move into the center of the tent in order to have sufficient head room. This caused her bare leg to push against the bare leg of her companion.

"And all guys have dicks like yours?" She asked.

The blind woman had not really thought about dicks before, well only in the most general terms. Her limited knowledge of boys, well Sokka really, had led her to believe that they were constructed much like she was. He had nipples after all, his chest was just harder and didn't have as prominent a set of bumps under his. It was logical for her to assume that his dick was a lot like her pussy, just less prominent maybe. This giant hard thing she had discovered changed everything and she wanted to know just what a dick was.

"Yeah." He said trying desperately to find a loin cloth to cover himself with.

"Are you sure?" She asked doubtfully. "I'm sure I would have noticed something that huge and stiff before now."

"It's not huge." He told her as the blood rushed again into his face. "And it only gets like that… ah… on special occasions."

"So all guys' dicks become enormous and stiff, but only on special occasions." The bender asked her friend, putting her hand on his bare thigh and leaning in towards his face.

The tribesman jumped slightly at the unexpected touch of the young woman's hand on him. He really had to find that loin cloth.

"Well, yeah it was a normal reaction to…" Sokka searched for the right phrase. "The situation we were in."

"What situation?" She wanted to know for future reference.

"Well you know. The two of us together like that and your hands down there touching me." The tribesman said clearing his throat. "That would get any guy excited."

"Excited? About what?" She wanted to know, shifting her hand farther up his leg, as she learned in more earnestly.

_Ahhh Crap!_ Sokka thought.

"You know, excited… aroused… ah… stimulated…ah…turned on…" He finally ran down.

"I don't understand." She told him frustrated, sliding her hand up to the front of his hip.

That's when it occurred to Sokka that Toph really did not understand.

"Didn't you ever talk to your mom about boys and sex and making babies?" He asked.

"Just a little." The bender replied. "Mostly we talked about me sitting up straight, and how to bow properly, and how to talk, and to not let my head shake."

"Ok…" The fifteen year old said, making a decision. "Well you know that a baby grows inside a woman until it is ready to be born, right?"

"Yeah!" She replied, making it obvious that she didn't understand what all this had to do with his dick getting long and stiff.

"Well… so… to get the baby in there the man and the woman have to mix their baby juices." Sokka continued with his explanation.

"Ok…" Toph agreed, though this was the first time she had heard about baby juices.

So… to get the man's baby juice up inside the woman, he has to get excited." The teen plowed on, his search for a loin cloth forgotten. "And when he gets excited enough his dick becomes long and stiff enough for him to push it up inside the woman…" Which was a far as he got.

"He does what?" The twelve year old exclaimed, horrified.

Toph unconsciously closed her legs and brought both hands protectively into her lap.

"Well to make the baby, the man has to get his baby juice deep inside the woman." The teen explained. "So he has to push his… dick up inside the woman's… pussy to deposit it there. You remember Chung and Liung back at the Serpent's Pass right? That's what they were doing. He had his thing up in her until he shot his baby juice out of his… thing."

"I just thought they were rubbing up against each other." The girl said surprised. "But he had his dick shoved up her pussy?"

"Yeah. That's how it's done." The boy explained.

"So you wanted to shove your giant hard dick up my pussy?" She asked in response.

"No!" Sokka proclaimed.

"But you just said that's why it changes like that, because you wanted to shove it up inside me." The girl proclaimed.

"That was because you were touching me! Not because I wanted to do anything."

"So just touching you can make you want to shove your dick up my pussy?" She asked horrified.

"No, well yes, but not you specifically… it's complicated…" He desperately tried to explain. "Guys are just easily excited is all."

"So to make a baby, your dick becomes enormous and stiff and you have to shove it up my pussy?" She asked trying to understand. "But it can become huge and hard just by touching near it?"

"Well except for the enormous part, yeah that's about it." He agreed.

"Sokka it was humongous." She declared.

"No it wasn't, my thing is perfectly normal." He corrected.

"You're not the one having it shoved up inside you!" She argued. "That thing would tear me in half."

"Toph you're way too young to be making babies." The boy explained. "It will be years before you are ready for sex."

"So do I get to shove anything up inside you?" She asked, mollified only slightly

"No… the woman is the one who has to get the baby juice deep inside her." He explained.

"Typical!" The young woman proclaimed. "So can I touch it?"

"What? No!" The young man declared, his hands covering his groin protectively.

"Oh come on." The bender said, curiosity evident in her voice. "I just want to feel what your dick is like."

"Toph!" The teen said shocked. "You can't go around feeling guys' things just because you want to."

"It's not guys, it's just you and your dick." She said reasonably, her hand sliding up his thigh again. "I mean who else can I ask? You're supposed to be my best friend."

"No!" He said seriously. "That would just be wrong.

Toph thought a moment, drumming her fingers on her best friend's thigh.

Sokka was unnerved by the pain in his head, the absolute darkness of the tent and the unexpected contact of his friend's hand. He was starting to become a little creeped out.

"What if I let you feel my pussy." Toph asked in a reasonable manner offering a compromise. "And then I could touch your dick."

"Toph!" That's even worse." The young man declared still protectively covering his groin.

"What! That would be fair." The twelve year old responded. "Wait! You've already touched my pussy. You touched me all over in the desert when you washed me. It's only fair that I get to touch you back!"

"No!" The boy nearly shouted. "Besides I never touched you, I used a wash cloth, and I didn't see anything either. I had you covered up the whole time."

"Really?" She asked, surprised.

"Yes!" He told her. "I would never touch you or look at you like that."

Toph had never realized that Sokka had gone to all that trouble before. She knew he had washed her but not that he had covered her up before undressing her and so forth. She blushed at the thought but it also gave her a warm feeling for her friend.

"Penis!" Sokka suddenly proclaimed.

"What?" She asked.

"That's the proper name for my dick." He told her, proud that he had remembered the word finally.

"You named your dick?" She asked.

"No! Of course not!" He declared a little too vehemently.

"Oh! You are so lying!" She shot back at him, leaning farther forward and placing her right hand on his chest for support, while her left slide up to his hip.

"No I'm not!" The boy denied the accusation. "Penis is the proper word for dick, any dick."

"Really?" She asked in disbelief. "That's such a nasty sounding word. Penis? Penis, no that sounds much worse than dick. I'm sticking with dick. So what name did you give your dick?"

"I did not name my penis." The boy told her.

"I can tell your lying, Meathead." She replied, bringing both hands up onto his chest and lowering her face till it was directly above his own.

"Ok, ok." He finally relented. "I call it 'Little Sokka'. You happy?"

"It's not little!" She shot back. "You should call it 'Enormous Sokka', or 'Humongous Sokka'."

"Ha, ha, very funny!" He grumped.

So…" She said with a sly grin. "Since you never touched 'Little Toph' then we can still make a deal. I'll let you touch me if I can touch you."

"Toph we are too old to be playing 'Healer' with each other." He told her adamantly.

"What's that?" She asked leaning farther onto him.

"That's where a boy and a girl… well they… they pretend to be healers and they… well they examine each other." He finally answered.

"So you've played healer with a girl?" She asked.

"A long time ago when I was kid." The embarrassment very evident in his voice.

"This is so unfair!" She proclaimed, thumping him on the chest. "You get to play healer with bunches of girls and you won't let me touch Humongous Sokka once."

"It wasn't lots, it was only one… girl… and it was when we were kids." He defended himself.

Sokka was feeling very badgered. He was naked, in the dark, with a terrible head ache, and the beautiful young girl he loved was lying almost on top of him which was causing his blood to rush all over his body finding various places to do a lot of embarrassing things to. And he was definitely not going to tell Toph that he had played healer with his sister.

"Come on, can't we play just a little?" She asked in a whispery, wheedlie little voice, her face floating invisibly just above his own.

"No!" He told her, finally fed up. "If you want to play healer with someone you should ask your boyfriend!"

"You're not my boyfriend!" She told him, a little too strongly.

"Not me! Your boyfriend!" He told her. "Asshole, or Ohev or whatever his name is."

"Asshole is not my boyfriend!" She shot back, anger entering her voice.

"Oh really? Then why were you kissing him all the time back in Cho-sen?" He asked, letting some of his jealousy vent into his voice.

"I never kissed him!" She declared.

"Funny? I could have sworn that was your mouth his lips were attached to!" He sarcastically shot at her.

"He kissed me!" She proclaimed. "I never kissed him!"

"OOOhhh… Well that makes all the difference!" He threw at her.

"It is different! Being kissed is not the same as kissing some one!" She scolded.

"Well it looked like the same thing to me!" He shot at her. "But what do I know, I'm not some great master earth bender who knows all about boys and kissing!"

Sokka felt Toph's hands grab his face then suddenly her lips where on his, smashing them up against his teeth. Before he could respond from the shock of the contact, her lips were gone and his head was bouncing off the hard ground.

"See it is different!" She declared. "Asshole!"

Toph slapped her hands down onto the ground and a slab of earth erupted down the middle of the tent, pulling the ground cloth with it as it rose to the apex of the two sides. Sokka was rolled off up against the impervious wall, landing on top of all his gear. Toph, who was prepared, lay down on her side of the tent, on top of her sleeping mat, pulled the blanket around her and began to cry.

"Meathead, you are such an idiot." The young woman whispered through her sobs.

All that could be heard from the other side of the now divided tent was a low,

"Owww…."

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Well another long wait for the new chapter and I apologize for the delay. It is fairly long if that is any consolation. Sokka is introduced to fandom and Toph is introduced to… Well you'll just have to read the chapter to find out. I really hope that second part works. In regard to Toph's perception of something you have to remember that she has no frame of reference her sample being only one. I've had this chapter planned for a long time but when it came down to the execution… well we'll just have to see.

Toph's piercing getting caught. A reviewer, TheIrregular, back on chapter 40 asked if I was sure I wanted her to have a dangly belly piercing, since there was a chance it could get caught on something. I answered at the time that I wanted her to have it as a rite of passage into teen hood, and while that still holds, you now know the other reason I had her get a dangly piercing. :-) (If you are still reading, which I hope you are :-)

"Little Sokka" I think someone used that in a review, which of course I can't find now to give credit, but it sounded so like a nickname that Sokka would use I put it in the story.

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More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

Reviews for chapter 46

To bg21; Hay I got them out of the village at least :-) Sorry for the long delay.

To NGPCfan5991; Your wish is my command.

To Hotaru; I agree about the pairing and am glad you think my story does them justice. Hopefully the little bit of Tokka time at the start of this chapter will tide you over.

Reviews for chapter 47

To Hotaru; Thank you again for your generous words. Hey that is what fan fics are for to fix the heinous errors committed by the creators :-). I'm just trying to do my part.

To Brian; Thank you very much. Well we'll just have to see what those sneaky Northerners want with Sokka…

To Sange; Thanks for the catch, I really appreciate it.

To James V; Wow thank you very much, and you're a really fast reader. I hope the current chapter does not disappoint.

To 555; That's great to hear. To have someone change their view because of something I have written is a huge compliment.

To MarieArcher; Thank you very much. I will never bail on you or this story. I just hope I can do both the justice you deserve.

To anonymous; Thank you very much, especially for recommending it to your friends. I am sorry about the long time between the updates.

To Mountain; Thank you very much, and don't worry I will keep writing, I just hope you will find it worth reading. I'll try to use more pronouns in the future.

General chapters

To Una; I understand but I did spend a lot of words on the Travelers chapters because I wanted to cover a lot of ground for both characters.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	49. Chapter 49

I'll Walk You Home pt. 49

Chapter 16

pt. 2

Hay on Wye

* * *

Sokka sat by the campfire under the predawn gray sky and nursed his third cup of willow tea. He had not gotten back to sleep after Toph had thrown up the barrier between them and had finally grabbed his clothes, crawled out of the tent, gotten dressed and had been sitting by the fire ever since. It was a frosty morning and he was dressed and in his coat and scarf. The hat was beside him, it hurt too much to wear it.

_Stupid, spoiled little Bitch!_ He thought as he flipped the wet rag he was using as a compress against the two lumps on his forehead so the cold side was against his head. _"Can I feel your dick?" "Ohev's not my boyfriend!"_ His mind had been running the conversation the two had had that night over and over again in his head. He had quickly determined that all the pain and the embarrassment he had suffered had been Toph's fault. _What a Bitch!_

.

_What a total Asshole!_ Toph thought as she lay shivering in her half of _Her _earthtent. The small stone tent was very cold, frost had formed on the inside and, though she could not see it, her breath steamed from her mouth and nostrils as she exhaled. _What a total and complete Jerk!_ She told herself. _"Oh we're too old to play healer." Fine he can play healer with every girl in the world but he can't play with me because I'm too old. I bet he played healer with Pinkle Toes and especially with Fan Girl. What a selfish Asshole._

_I can't believe I kissed him!_ That was the thought that rankled most. That she had kissed the _stupid… arrogant… loud… stupid… selfish… stuck up… Stupid…._ _Thank Oma and Shu that this dumb trip is almost over._

She shivered for a while longer but finally had to admit that she would have to get up sometime and that she really had to pee so it might as well be now. Slapping her hands down by her sides she dropped the earthtent back into the ground.

Sokka turned at the earthbending and saw Toph climb ungracefully to her feet, the blanket still wrapped around her.

"Morning." (_Bitch)_ He called to her.

"Yeah!" (_Fuck you asshole_) She responded.

The small bender had forgotten to retie the draw string on her shorts during the night and they began to slide down her hips. She made a quick grab for the waist band and pulled them back up, but her hand had snagged the chain of her belly piercing and the sharp tug sent pain shooting through her stomach.

"Fuck!" She cursed under her breath.

"Huh?" The boy asked at the sound.

"Nothing!" (_Jerk!_) She shot at him.

"Fine." (_Brat!_) He responded.

With the blanket draped around her shoulders Toph pulled the drawstring on her pants taught to re-tie it. In her agitated state she pulled too hard and the string broke somewhere in the waistband. _Just great!_ She was in no mood to change right now, especially since she had already dropped the small tent into the ground, so, holding the blanket around her with one hand and her shorts up with the other she stepped off of her sleeping mat with her bare foot onto the frosty ground, intending to walk into the surrounding woods.

"Fucking cold!" She cried stepping back onto the mat as the frost burned her foot.

"Yeah." (_Spoiled little brat_) He observed. "You should put your boots on."

Toph turned towards the young man, thought for a moment then stomped her foot down onto the sleeping mat. The stone Sokka had been sitting on was swallowed up by the earth and with a painful sounding thump the boy's butt hit the frozen ground.

"Any more advice, Captain Obvious?" (_Shithead!_) Toph asked.

"None whatsoever." (_Bitch!_) Sokka answered.

With that, Toph pulled her boots on and stomped off into the woods.

.

When she returned she noticed that Sokka had found a new rock to sit on. She thought about bending that one into the ground but she decided it wasn't worth the trouble. She bent a wall between the young man and herself to give her some privacy to change. She left her hair in the long braid not wanting to take the time and trouble of pulling it loose. Once dressed she joined the tribesman at the fire.

The two ate a cold quiet breakfast.

.

The two travelers stood in the ancient road, all their equipment slung about them. Sokka even had his leg brace tied to the outside of his back pack. His leg was stronger now after all the walking he had done and he had not worn the brace since leaving the Travelers camp.

Heat seemed to radiate off of the young man and the young woman, yet still nothing was said between them.

"Well let's go." Sokka finally suggested.

Without thinking he held out his hand to the young woman, without thinking she took it, and the two of them walked angrily down the old road.

.

Around midmorning they passed through another fishing village set by the river. There was another line of children that came out and bowed to the couple as they passed. The two nodded in reply and continued on. People came out of their houses and stores to watch the couple pass.

Three young men in front of the inn stepped out into the ancient road, to watch the earthbender and the tribesman as they walked through the village. One waved to Toph, who smiled shyly and waved back, this earned the villager a scowl from the traveler in black, and caused him to take a step back.

"Do you want to stop?" Sokka asked his companion.

"Why? So you can talk to your fan girls?!" Toph replied sullenly.

"I thought you might want to kiss some more guys while you had the chance!" He shot back in answer.

"I'll kiss anybody I want!" She told him with heat in her words.

"Exactly!" He growled back.

"Forget you!" Was her sullen response.

"That shouldn't be a problem for you." He said under his breath.

"What?!" She asked.

"Nothing, let's keep walking." He suggested.

"Fine!" She told him.

"Fine!" He concurred.

Thus the longest conversation the two had had since they had started that morning ended and the couple passed out of the village.

.

The two bandits hid behind a tree by the side of the ancient road. One was tall and thin, with an equally thin mustache. His name was Bud of the first Spring Flower, but only his mother had called him that. Most people simply called him Bud.

The second robber was short and stout, with a round childlike face. His name was Lu Lee but his companion called him Lu.

"I hope they're not fishermen." Lu said, rubbing the day old bump on his head.

The two highway men were new to the business of robbery, having just started two days before and had had a difficult time of it. All their victims so far had been fishermen returning home from up north, and citing the example of someone called the Black Lotus, they had refused to give the pair any money and had beaten them up when the bandits had attempted to take it by force.

"I think one of them may have a fishing rod on his pack." Bud remarked, peeking around the tree.

"Maybe we should try another line of work." The shorter of the two suggested, tossing the round stone he planned to use as a weapon up in the air and catching it.

Bud picked up the heavy tree limb that was his weapon and gave it a couple of practice swings.

"Well..." the taller man said looking at his club thoughtfully. "I've heard that there is a ball team in Gaoling that is looking for players. We could try out for that."

"A baseball team?" Lu asked, the excitement evident in his voice.

"Yeah!" Bud answered peering around the tree at the mismatched pair of travelers approaching.

"Do you know the names of any of the players?" His stout friend asked.

"Well..." The thin man thought. "Hu's on first."

Lu had a tremendous feeling of deja vu, but he plowed on anyway.

"That's what I'm asking." The shorter man explained. "Who's the first baseman?"

"Exactly!" Bud answered, peering around the tree again.

Lu slapped his hand to his face at the reply.

.

Toph tugged on Sokka's hand and in an undertone informed him,

"There are two people hiding behind that tree up ahead."

"Where?" Sokka asked looking forward as casually as he could.

"Behind that tree." She told him with a little irritation.

"Toph there are like three hundred trees up ahead." He said in a heated whisper. "We're in the middle of forest after all."

"It's the one with the two people behind it." She explained even more irritated.

"Well that's a big help!" He told her, stopping in the road and pulling her up short. "What are they doing?"

"They're hiding behind a tree!" (_Idiot_) She was now only a few steps away from shouting.

"Yes, I got that!" (_Brat_) Sokka said dropping her hand and turning to face her, setting his hands on his hips. "But how are they hiding."

"What do you mean how are they hiding?!" She shot back, turning to face him with her own hands now bunched into fists and resting on her hips. "They're hiding!"

Unheard by the two travelers there was a muffled conversation coming from behind a tree only a few paces ahead of them.

"Yes, but are they hiding like they were caught doing something and are embarrassed about it." He explained as if to a little child. "Or are they hiding because they are afraid. Or are they hiding like they are spying on us. There are lots of different ways of hiding, which one are they using."

"How the fuck should I know!" She yelled at him. "Oma and Shu you are such an Asshole sometimes!"

The two highwaymen jumped awkwardly out onto the road. Their sudden appearance was missed by the young couple.

"Sometimes?! Sometimes?!" Sokka cried out, raising his hands to the heavens. "Don't you mean all the time! According to you I'm always the Asshole in this…" He gestured between the two of them. "…friendship. You're always right, and I'm always the Asshole!"

"It's not my fault that you're always wrong!" She yelled back.

"We want money!" The taller of the two men called out to the mismatched couple.

"Yeah!" The stouter man agreed.

They were ignored by the arguing couple in the road.

"Has it ever occurred to you…" Sokka seethed at the small woman. "…That just possibly, on the off chance, just once, every, oh two hundred years or so…" He spread his arms wide to illustrate the amount of time. "…that you might just be wrong, that you might be the Asshole?!"

"Impossible!" Toph cried out, arms flailing. "You're such a huge Asshole that there is no room left for me!"

"Excuse me!" Bud called out.

"Oh! I see!" The tribesman cried in false understanding, using all the sarcasm he could muster, which was actually quite a lot. "You're saying that since I am such a useless piece of shit, in order to balance the universe, you have to be completely, and magnificently awesome!"

"Yeah!" The earthbender agreed, though she wasn't sure just what she was agreeing to, but it sounded good.

"Excuse me?!" The tall thin bandit called out again, a little louder this time.

Sokka turned his head towards the ragged pair and in a barely controlled voice requested,

"Do you Mind?! We are having a private conversation here!"

He turned back to his companion and added,

"Unless these are two more of your secret boyfriends that you've got hidden all over the Earth Kingdom so you can have plenty of opportunities for more kissing."

"YOU'RE NOT MY BOYFRIEND!" Toph screamed. "You're just pissed because none of your GIRLFRIENDS showed up to play healer with you!"

"I don't have any girlfriends!" Sokka told her in a low dangerous voice.

"EXACTLY!" She shouted in triumph. "I'm not your girlfriend!"

Toph turned to the two robbers and demanded,

"If you kissed a guy would that make him your boyfriend?"

"Ahhhhh…" The tall thin man said. "Oh no, we're not like that." He said pointing to his companion. "We're just business associates."

"I thought we were friends." Lu said in a hurt tone.

"Well yes we're friends but not in that way." Bud tried to back peddle.

"No! No!" Sokka explained. "She mean's her habit of kissing every guy that comes across her path."

"At least I don't play healer with every girl in the world, like some people!" Toph shot back at the teen.

"It was one girl when I was a kid!" Sokka proclaimed.

"Well..." Bud said, leaning on his club as if it were a cane. "If you kiss a lot of guys then no, I would not consider them your boyfriends."

"Wouldn't that depend on how she kissed them?" Lu asked his friend.

"I DON'T KISS LOTS OF BOYS!" Toph shouted.

"Yeah right!" Sokka said, just loud enough to be heard, as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Then the type of kiss would make all the difference." Bud stated, agreeing with his companion.

"Errrghhh!" Toph growled, raising her fists over her head in frustration.

"It was like this!" The small woman cried out grabbing the teen's head.

Toph pulled Sokka's head down towards her as she rose up on her toes to close the distance between them. She had been taught how to kiss, when she was a child, by Madame Wang so she could kiss her parents on the cheek. Toph pursed her lips into a tight little "O" shape as she rose up on her toes, and crashed them into the tribesman's mouth, but this time it was a little different than the previous night's kiss. Well actually it was a lot different.

Sokka had seen this kiss coming, literally, unlike last night in the dark tent and so he was able to prepare for it.

The first surprise for Toph was that her nose was not smushed up against Sokka's. _He's tilted his head!_ She quickly realized, and tilted her own in the opposite direction. This seemed to make it easier for their mouths to join.

The young woman had intended this to be a fast violent kiss. She wanted to get it over with quickly, but as she pulled back, dropping back onto her heels, Sokka's lips maintained contact with hers.

_His lips are moist and warm!_ She realized as the kiss continued. Instead of a hard "O" Sokka's lips, she realized, were slightly open in an "Ahhh" shape, that seemed to capture her mouth. She relaxed her own lips and followed the young man's lead.

She could feel that his jaw was also relaxed, his mouth open behind his lips, allowing more contact between the two of them, and letting his lips move against hers.

She felt his left hand move up behind her neck supporting her head as she had to tilt it back because he was so much taller than she was. Her hands released his face and moved up to behind his neck and head. She was amazed to feel each strand of his hair where it was pulled up into his wolf tail.

She felt his right hand move to her waist and pull her gently closer to him, her packs and bags preventing him from actually circling her waist.

His lips were chapped and rough, strong but gentle and they pulled against her lips drawing her in to a more meaningful, more emotional kiss.

She continued to follow his lead, letting her own mouth go slack and her jaw to open, her lips moving with his. It was all very strange and wonderful the way their mouths moved , as if they had done this hundreds of times, but it still held the surprise and discovery of the first time.

As she felt Sokka begin to withdraw she rose up on her toes and pulled his head back down not willing to lose the wonderful feeling. His hands pulled her tighter to him as he lowered his face to hers continuing the kiss.

Toph felt her heart pounding in her chest, beating itself against her ribs trying to free it self from the cramped confines of her body. As her breasts crushed against Sokka's chest she could feel the shock waves of his heart pounding against his own ribs. Their two hearts beating out a rhythm that only a dancer of great passion and skill would ever be able to dance to.

She could feel his jaw move behind his lips, his head move as he tried to find more and more of her mouth to explore. She did the same, sometimes following, sometimes leading him in this dance of lips and mouths.

Toph had no idea how long the kiss had lasted, perhaps a second but more likely and hour, maybe two. She wished it could last a life time. But finally Sokka began to pull back and she let him, but before he broke contact he returned for one last touch with her lips. Loving and caring and needing, and then he pulled back, and it was her turn to follow his lips for one last fleeting contact before it was finally over.

She collapsed against him, her cheek against his chest as she panted desperately for air. The air in the mountains was obviously very thin and she was unable to fill her lungs with enough of it to sustain her. Sokka was obviously having the same problem as she felt his chest rise and fall and heard his heart pound against her face.

It was quiet in the ancient road for a time, except for the sounds of the birds in the trees, and of the two young people breathing.

"Wow!" Lu finally sighed.

"Ah... Yeah... I would call that a boyfriend kiss." Bud opined.

At the sound of the voices the young couple broke apart. Toph grabbed for her hair to hid the intense blush that was suddenly heating her face, but it was still in the long braid and was useless for camouflage, so she just lowered her head and turned away from the young man and the two robbers.

Sokka was in a similar predicament, and cleared his throat while looking off into the forest.

"Thanks for the help." The tribesman finally said, in a thick voice.

"Yeah." Toph added.

"Well we should be going." The tan teen suggested, holding out his hand to the blind woman.

"Yeah!" She agreed taking his hand.

Bud raised his club, but before he could say anything Lu cut him of by asking,

"You wouldn't have any spare change would you? We're trying to get to Gaoling to try out for a baseball team."

"Oh... sure." Sokka said pulling two small silver coins out from his robe and handing them to the shorter panhandler as he and Toph passed them.

Bud and Lu watched the couple as they walked down the ancient highway.

"That was a good idea." Bud said. "About the panhandling, we actually got some money and didn't get beat up."

"Thanks." Lu replied with a bit of smugness in his voice, then he added,

"So, who's on first?"

"That's right." Bud replied, happy that his friend had finally got it.

"What's right?" Lu asked in frustration.

"No! Watt's on second base." Bud explained yet again.

"I don't know!" Lu cried out.

"Third base" Bud told him.

.

The young couple walked down the road for a while in silence. Eventually Sokka cleared his throat.

_If he says he's sorry I'm going to bury him!_ Toph thought.

"You were absolutely right last night." He finally said. "Being kissed is completely different from..." His free hand searched the air near his head for the right word. "Sharing a kiss. I apologize for being such an asshole about it."

Toph felt a small smile move across her lips.

"That's ok!" She told him. "It was your turn."

She pulled her hand free from his, which earned her a worried look from the boy that she couldn't see. Then she punched him hard in the arm.

"Thanks." He told her with a smile, rubbing the new bruise.

"Just don't think that that means I..." But she couldn't finish the catch phrase, she really didn't want to say that to him any more.

"Well..." She continued taking his hand again. "Maybe it means I like you just a little."

The fifteen year old suddenly felt like he was a little kid again. A huge smile spread across his face, and he added a little happy skip to his step as he continued with his friend, who was a girl, definitely not his girl friend, down the highway.

.

Around mid day they ate a cold lunch on a small grass covered hill by the side of the river. It felt good to drop all their gear and even take off their coats and scarves under the warm sun. After eating the two lay down to just enjoy the warmth and the sound of the river.

After a few minutes Sokka rolled up onto his side looking down on Toph.

"Is it ok if I move your bangs?" He asked her.

Toph had been absently rubbing the feathery end of her braid back and forth across her lips, it reminded her of the tingly feeling of Sokka's lips on hers, and she had not noticed her friend's change of position.

"Why?!" She asked surprised quickly letting go of her hair and trying to look innocent.

"I want to look at your eyes." He explained, pushing her bangs to the side with a finger.

"Why? They don't work." She asked, letting her frustration enter her voice.

"They don't work for seeing but they work for a lot of other things." He explained leaning in a little closer. "They are beautiful, and the way you are always looking off somewhere that no one else will ever be able to see makes you special and interesting. And they tell me when you are happy, and sad, and they tell me when you're pissed off at me, which I really hate by the way, and they tell me when you like something, and they tell me when your planning something evil, and they tell me when you got my joke but won't admit it. Your eyes tell me lots of things. They work great for all of that. I love your eyes."

Toph didn't know what to say. She thought she should say something but nothing was coming out. All she felt was the Saber Tooth Moose lions playing kick ball in her stomach and that little tickle from last night down between her legs, and Meathead had not even touched her.

"Well if you love them so much..." She finally said remembering something Katara had once said to her. "... why don't you... kiss them."

"I'd love too." He told her.

Sokka threw his left arm over her and put his hand on the ground just past her right shoulder, and leaned over her. She could almost sense his face hovering above hers even without her earthbending.

"Close you eyes." He whispered.

She closed her eyes and a moment later felt the breath light touch of his lips on first one then the other.

"I love your nose too." He whispered again.

She felt the touch of his lips a little more firmly on the tip of her nose.

"And I really love your..."

He said it so softly that she could hardly hear him, but she felt the lightest touch of all on her lips. She reached up and running her right hand past his chest up onto the back of his neck she pulled him down to make the contact real and strong. After a moment he pulled back, rolling onto his back beside her again.

"We should probably get going." He sighed.

"Not just yet." She told him, reaching down and taking his hand.

The two lay there another half hour, but eventually the sun went behind a cloud and the air grew cold, and the two got up to continue on their way.

.

_So kissing little girls now!_ Sokka the Great observed.

The young man snuck a quick look at his companion as they walked hand in hand down the ancient highway. Yes she was very young, but he never thought of her that way.

_She hasn't been a little girl since she was six._ He told himself.

Well not really himself. It was the image of himself he had created long ago when he was a young boy. Sokka the Great, who looked like an older version of his father, but scarred and worn by many battles and cares. The Big Chief of the tribe, who would one day be acclaimed ruler and guide to his people. The old man had limped out of the back of the young man's mind to berate him for his recent actions.

_Which was only six years ago!_ The old man told the younger.

_She's worn her hair up!_ Sokka argued back.

_Once!_ Sokka the Great shot back.

_It counts!_ He told himself.

_You've ruined your friendship!_ The older version of himself observed in a sad voice.

_Yeah, I know._ He told himself in an even sadder tone.

_You should have grabbed her ass when you had the chance!_ His lizard brain told him.

_Shut up!_ He told himself.

_He's right!_ Sokka the Great said, the disdain evident in his tone. _If you're taking advantage of her feelings for you, you might as well get all you can._

_She doesn't have feelings for me._ He told his other selves.

_She kissed you back! _The Big Chief replied. _ She has to feel something for you, she is a girl after all, a little girl._

_Yeah man, I bet you could get a good feel off of her._ Lizard cheered. _Maybe even a hand job!_

_He's right._ The older version of himself advised. _She's already offered. If that's all that this is about than you should take all you can get._

_That's disgusting!_ He shouted to himself.

_Then why are you kissing her._ The big chief wanted to know.

_Because I care about her._ He responded.

_I thought you cared about Suki_.

_I do!_ He told himself.

_So that makes it ok to get anything you can from Toph and when you leave her and go back to Suki you can get what you can from her too. And because you care for both of them that makes it ok._

_Hell yeah!_ Lizard crowed in agreement.

_No! _ Sokka shouted in his head. _I love Toph! I would never use her like that._

_And what about Suki?_

_Yeah Man!_ Lizard agreed. _Suki's a hot piece of ass and she puts out! You don't want to give up on that till you have something better._

_I Love Suki._ He told himself. _But..._

_But what?_ The big chief asked.

_When I kiss Toph._ He told himself remembering the feeling of her lips on his.

_Yes?_

_It's not the same. _He told himself. _It's different with Suki. Yes Suki is amazing and beautiful and the first girl I ever met. But when I kiss Toph it's like when I kissed Yue. It fills my soul when I kiss Toph._

_You owe Suki._ Sokka the Great told him. _She saved both of your lives, and she has given herself to you._

_I know._ Sokka thought sadly. _But if I love someone else, like Zoltan said, I will just make the two of us miserable. No matter what happens with Toph, I have to break up with Suki. _

_Dude noooo, Suki's hot!_ _You should keep her on the side._ Lizard insisted.

_Toph doesn't love you._ Older Sokka told him. _You'll end up alone in the end._

_Fine! Then I'll be alone._ He answered himself.

_You'll have to tell her how you feel._ The big chief told him. _And that will end your friendship forever._

_I know, but I don't have any choice. I'll tell her tonight. Toph and I can have at least one last day together before I destroy it all._

_What an idiot!_ Lizard pronounced in judgment.

.

The fingers of Toph's free hand skated along her lips again.

_I swear they are still tingling. _She told herself.

_He kissed me. I kissed him. We kissed!_

_He's kissed lots of girls._ Madame Wang told the young girl. _It doesn't mean anything to him._

_I don't care! _Toph told the nanny. _We kissed! More than once!_

_Maybe he'll play healer with you now!_ Toph's lizard brain suggested.

_None of that!_ Madame Wang insisted.

The blind girl felt a hot flush fill her face and neck at the idea. She dropped her hand to feel the jade coin at her throat, under her clothes.

_He really likes me!_

_And he loves that Suki girl!_ The nanny pointed out.

_I don't care!_ Toph told herself, suppressing a little giggle. _We kissed!_

_I'm sure he's done a lot more than kiss his girlfriend._ Madame Wang insisted.

_Yeah and we're next._ Lizard screeched.

_You are not going to throw yourself away on some non bending water triber._ The nanny told both Toph and her lizard brain. _What would your parents say._

_I don't care about them._ The young woman thought. _They've never cared about me._

_They love you!_ Madame wang insisted. _And have always wanted what was best for you._

_Sokka is what is best for me._ Toph came back to the harsh older woman. _I know, I know, he loves Suki not me. I know he's kissed lots of girls, and it doesn't mean anything to him. But I love him and no matter what happens I need him, and will take whatever of him I can get._

_If you love him so much then why haven't you told him?_ The Nanny played her trump card.

_He'll laugh at me._ Toph admitted, feeling her eyes begin to burn. _I'll never tell him how I really feel._

_._

The two young people continued on, consumed by their own thoughts as the road led them out of the mountains and into the high foothills to the south. The road followed the now large strong river as it slowed as the grade eased.

For some reason Sokka was reluctant to call a halt to the days traveling, and it was close to sunset before he thought that he could not put it off any longer. But then he saw a good excuse ahead in the shape of an old friend lying by the side of the road.

"Foxy Guy!" Sokka called out, waving.

Toph pulled from her own thoughts used her bending to feel the fox/wolf as the animal rose up from where she had been lying.

The tribesman tossed a piece of dried meat to the knowledge seeker, who snatched it from the air with a jump, and ate it happily.

Sokka watching the animal jump up realized something for the first time. Foxy Guy was actually Foxy Girl. The young man had just not noticed before.

The teen squatted down before the animal and gave her ears a good scratch, which earned him a lavish lick or three on his face.

"A friend of yours?" Toph asked.

"She's one of the book finders that Wa She Tong uses." Sokka explained. "She helped me out when we went to the 'Library' that time in the desert."

There was reverence in his voice when he said the word "Library".

He looked down as he felt a tugging on the hem of his coat. Foxy girl was pulling towards a very old cart track that lead away from the main road. The track was old but from the sign, was still in use.

"She want's us to follow her." He explained to his friend.

"Oh boy, books!" Toph exclaimed with false enthusiasm.

"Come on, it's an adventure." Sokka told her pulling her down the track.

The young couple followed the fox/wolf for maybe half an hour before they lost sight of her as she entered a thick fog bank ahead of them. Sokka could hear the barking from the fog and followed the fox/wolf in. The fog was very thick and the teen had to use the wheel ruts of the track to guide him as they moved through the dripping cloud. Even Toph's bending sense was suppressed by the heavy blanket of moisture on the earth.

After awhile Sokka could see the glow of lights up ahead.

"I think we're almost there." He told the bender.

"Good!" Toph told him, shaking the heavy water drops from her hat and coat.

The fog finally thinned revealing a series of shops lined up along the wagon track. Each one was connected by a wooden board walk and a narrow over hang. The sound of dripping water was everywhere, and hanging outside each shop was a paper lantern glowing white in the wisps of fog.

Sokka led Toph up onto the side walk and began to move down the line of shops. Each one was brightly lit on the inside. And the hanging lanterns on the outside of each illuminated a series of signs written in various languages and alphabets. He finally found a sign he could read on the first shop.

"A Change of Hobbit" He read aloud. "Not very good spellers." He observed to his companion.

The next was named "Camelot Books", and after that was "The Bookman".

"They're book stores!" Sokka exclaimed with glee, nearly jumping up and down in his excitement.

"Oh joy!" Toph replied in her most lugubrious tone.

Movement down the line of shops pulled Sokka's eyes to a beautiful young woman stepping out from one of the stores. From the sign it was "Acres of Books".

The young woman was dressed in the Kyoshi style, with her dark brown hair pulled back in a long sheaf down her back and past her waist. She was hurriedly arranging her long kimono and obi and as she finished and looked up Sokka was struck by her face. Her skin was white, not pale but dead white, even her eyebrows were white. The only hint of color other than her large dark brown eyes, were her pale pink lips, and her red tongue which was just showing between her lips. She had sharp features a distinct nose and long ears, and her eyes slanted up and back at a high angle.

The kimono she was wearing had a white hem but as it climbed it faded into a dark rich brown that matched the young woman's eyes.

Her smile turned into a bark of delighted laughter as her eyes fixed on those of the young man.

"You found us. How wonderful." She said beckoning him forward with her hand.

"A... Yeah." Sokka said leading Toph down the boardwalk. "Are these all book stores?"

"Yes!" She answered with delight. "This is 'Hay on Wye' the village of booksellers."

Sokka bowed to the woman in greeting.

"I am Sokka of the water tribe." He told her in greeting.

"Oh how polite." She clapped her hands and licked her lips in happiness.

"And you may call me Su-Kami." She said bowing.

"And this is my friend Toph." Sokka said indicating the young girl by his side.

"Yes! Yes!" Su-Kami said in delight. "Come in, Come in."

With this last she took the teens free hand and pulled the two travelers into the shop. The sight took Sokka's breath away. It was full of tables and shelves all covered with books. Old books, new books, small books, huge tomes, bound in every style. The shop somehow seemed to be larger on the inside then it could possibly be, judging from the outside. It really did seem to contain acres of books.

"So... This is him!" A squat little man behind a short counter by the door said.

Sokka's blue eyes were met by a pair of small dark ones peering over a pair of spectacles perched on the end of the old man's long nose.

"Forgive me." Su-Kami said, bowing. "This is Aki, this is his shop."

"Don't bother taking your shoes off." The old man said. "But leave your bags and packs here by the door."

The pair divested themselves of all their gear, and when they had finished Toph asked,

"Is there a chair I can use?" The floor was wood and with her boots on she was unable to sense anything in the shop, not to mention that she had no use for books.

"Here you go Toph." Sokka told her leading her to a comfortable looking chair by the door.

It appeared to be the only flat surface in the shop with out a pile of books on it.

Once Toph was sitting Su-Kami pulled Sokka to a large table covered in more than a hundred books of various types, sizes, and bindings.

"I set these aside for you." She told him indicating the large pile.

"Ahh... Thank you." The young man replied in surprise.

"You'll like this one." The strange woman said holding up a black bound book. "It's a poem, the story of a very clever man returning from a very long war and all his adventures and how he escapes using his wits to return to the woman he loves."

"That sounds really interesting." Sokka said opening the book and seeing page after page of small indecipherable symbols. "Only I can't read this."

"Yes." She gave her throaty laugh. "It is written in a very old language. But using this book you can learn to read it, once you have learned another old language, which you can learn from this book."

She piled all three books into the young man's arms.

"Of course once you learn the old language you should read this book first." She told him holding up another large book. "It's the poem of the war the clever man is returning from. It is the story of a young prince who is so enamored of his honor and lost in his pride that he abandons the true path to honor and glory until it is almost too late."

"Sounds familiar." Toph groused from her chair.

"Yes it is a very old story." Su-Kami agreed, licking her lips.

"I'll need something to carry them in." Sokka observed.

"Aki, get a sack for the customer." The woman called. "Better make it two."

There were more books. A lot more books. A thin one on strategy by a Sun Tzu. One on tactics by Musashi. Another about the conquest of a place called Gaul that required another book to teach him another language. Books of history about places he had never heard of. Books about fictional villains and heroes and spirits out of legend. The song of a great hero of the Geats. The story of the Great Cattle Raid of a place called Ulster. The story of a great prince called Rama and Sita the woman who loved him. And another, the oldest of all according to Su-Kami, the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. All in there own languages that the teen would have to learn from even more books.

The largest set weren't books at all. They were wooden boxes as long as the tall young man's forearm and as wide and as deep as his hand. Each one contained leaves of paper stacked one atop the other written in a strange language.

"These are the books of the air benders." Su-Kami explained. "their history and their ways and beliefs. The whole story and life of the air nomads is written here."

.

"How much do I owe you?" Sokka asked as he tied the ends of the two very full sacks together.

"For the books, nothing." The stout old man replied. "They're not mine, Su-Kami has been bringing them here for months just waiting for you to show up."

"Oh, Thank you." The young man said bowing to the shop keeper. "And thank you very much." He said bowing to the young woman.

"Toph, time to go." He called to his friend where she dozed by the door.

"Finally!" She sighed stretching her arms out and rising from the chair.

Sokka handed her her bags and packs.

"The books are not mine." Aki said from behind his counter. "But the sacks are mine, and must be paid for."

"Aki..." Su-Kami said warningly.

"Of course." Sokka said pulling out some coins. "How much?"

"Not that stupid metal." The old man said waving the coins away. "You can't read coins. But I smell something there that is of interest."

With this last the long nosed shop keeper pointed to Sokka's pack by the door.

"I don't have any food in here." The teen said putting the ruck sack on the counter.

"What's in here?" Aki asked tapping the map tube lashed to the side of the pack.

"Just a map and some letters." The teen explained opening the case, and pulling out the contents.

The squat old man snatched up the map from all the papers and unrolled it on the counter. He examined it minutely his nose almost touching the paper.

"A copy, but very old, very old indeed." The shop keeper mumbled. "There's is blood and fear, and trust and love, and mmmmm... terror and dreams. Yes... and the birth of legends. Yes this will do nicely."

"Aki!" Su-Kami scolded in anger. "You can't take that. The books are mine to give."

"Do you want me to tell the old one that you have been stealing from him for a human." The short fat man replied, his nose still in the map.

"These are all extras." The sharp featured woman declared. "They are duplicates that have been weeded from the collection. Better that they go to someone who will read and cherish them then to be thrown out onto the sands. I stole nothing."

"No matter!" Aki told her.

He held up the map and told her, "This is my price."

"It's all right. Let him have it." Sokka said closing up the tube and shouldering the back pack. "I don't need it anymore."

Toph walked out of the shop into the wagon track running through the village. She had had enough of book stores.

Sokka began to pull on his bags and duffles.

"You could stay." Su-Kami said as she walked over to him. "He could stay couldn't he?"

"Of course, he's a reader." Aki said without lifting his face from the map.

"You could stay here with me." the beautiful woman told him, resting her hand on his cheek. "And we would read to each other in the light and hunt in the dark, running down game in the woods. And our children and our children's children would be the wisest of the wise. They would be the Onmyoji and would stand behind all the thrones of men and guide the world through a thousand thousand years of peace and prosperity. Where the teacher would be exalted above all others, even kings."

"Sokka?" Toph called from outside.

"I... I have to go." Sokka told her pulling the joined sacks over his head. The books weighed as much as he did and the teen had to strain to stay up right.

"Of course you do." Su-Kami said.

She held the young man for a moment then moving her face close to his she sent her tongue out and licked his cheek.

Sokka felt the rough dry scrape of her tongue on his face and was very surprised by it.

"Sorry." She gave her throaty laugh. "I couldn't resist. You just taste so good."

"Sokka! Something's wrong!" Toph called. "I can't use my bending."

"I've got to go!" The teen said rushing out to his friend.

"Of course." The strange woman said.

"Bending?!" Aki said finally lifting his head from the map. "You didn't say she was an earth shifter."

"What of it?" Su-Kami asked.

"Fool!" The old man cried in fear and anger. "My people hate the earth shifters. They're the ones that build the towns and the cities. They're the ones that have driven us from our ancient homes. If she's been trying to bend my people will have felt it and will be coming for her."

"Oh FLEAS!" The woman cursed and scampered out onto the village road.

"What's wrong Toph?" Sokka asked coming up on his friend.

"What's wrong is my bending." She told him anger evident in her tone. "I can hardly feel anything and the most I can do is raise a little bump in the road. At first I just thought it was the fog, but there is something about this place that makes it impossible for me to bend properly."

"Follow me!" Su-Kami commanded running up to them. "You have to get past the ancient road. Aki's people cannot cross it due to the old protection laid on it. But if they catch your lover before you get there they will never let her go."

The young woman leaned down and pulled up the hem of her kimono and ran down the wagon track into the fog.

"Hurry!" she called.

"Come on Toph!" Sokka said grabbing her hand and pulling her down the road into the fog.

"Oh goody!" Toph declared in false enthusiasm as she was pulled along. "Running for our lives again!"

Outside of the village the fog thickened again till Sokka could only see a pace or two in front of him. He guided on the wheel ruts of the track and ran as fast as he could which was more of jog due to all the weight he was carrying. His left leg was already starting to burn with fatigue.

"Hurry!" Su-Kami commanded from somewhere in front of them.

Sokka was already panting after less than a minute. The weight causing his shoulders and back to ache.

"Something's coming." Toph declared between breaths.

The tribesman could hear it. At first it seemed to be a large number of small animals running, but as it got closer it became clearer to him. It was the familiar sound of a large number of men in full armor running. An army chasing fugitives.

"Faster!" Su-Kami barked from out of the fog in front of them.

Sokka's left leg was starting to fail.

"Toph grab my belt." He panted out to her, pulling her hand to his belt.

He felt her strong hand latch onto the leather freeing his hand. He slid both hands under the straps of his gear and still running he shot his hands forward and up while ducking his head dropping all his gear onto the road behind him.

"What was that?" The blind girl asked.

"Getting rid of my gear." He told her taking her hand again.

He felt Toph struggle for a moment then he heard her own packs hit the ground. This was better but it was the books that were the real weight that was slowing him down. He hated losing the books, especially the air nomad books. Aang needed those to rebuild his people. And while he would die to save them. No book was worth Toph's life. He pulled them off his shoulder and dropped them into the road.

Behind him he heard the crash of a large number of armored men going down on top of each other. He smiled to himself. He would take any good luck he could get right now, and a bunch of packs and shoulder bags in the fog would be good trip falls.

"Hurry" Su-Kami growled invisibly in front of them.

Free from all the weight Sokka could really run now and he put his long legs to full use, almost dragging Toph along beside him. The blind bender was doing her best but her smaller stature could not keep up with the tall hunter. She latched both hands on his arm and nearly lifted herself off the ground to keep up with him.

"Almost there!" Came Su-Kami's strangled cry from out of the fog.

Sokka reached with his free hand for the buckle of his weapons belt. There was one more weight he could sacrifice for Toph's safety. Weapons would be of no use against an army of armored men, and the scabbards and weapons might trip more of the pursuers as they tried to catch the pair.

To the left and right he could see shapes moving in the fog. Behind him he heard the sound of the pursuit. They were almost upon them. He put on his last burst of speed hauling Toph up off the ground. They were running down slope and he was in danger of running out from under his feet but he kept going.

Then just ahead in the limited view the fog allowed he saw the slope drop away. Because of the mist he couldn't tell how much of a drop there was. It could be just one hand or it could be a hundred paces. Without slowing he pulled Toph to his chest and yelled,

"Hang on!"

He felt her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he leaped over the gap, turning in the air so he would land on his back. In less than a second he felt the ground knock the breath out of him as he hit the grassy slope of the hill. He slid on his back, Toph on top of him for what felt like a hundred paces down the wet slope, until he finally stopped.

He pushed Toph off of him and scrambled to his feet, pulling Gia's knives from his boots as he stood. Running on pure adrenaline he shouted.

"Toph run!"

"I'm not leaving you!" The bender cried out as she wrapped her arms around him.

With a flick of his wrists the two blades sprang out and locked in place. Sokka looked up slope waiting for the attack. And then he realized they were out of the fog on the far side of the ancient road.

"I can bend!" Toph panted in triumph.

She stomped her foot to the ground and an earth barrier rose up between the couple and the road.

The two stood for a moment. Sokka grabbing his friend returning the hug she had him in.

"Toph are you ok?!" Sokka asked between pants.

"Fine! You?" She panted in reply.

They held each other for a while letting their breathing slow. Finally Sokka eased his hold on her and took a step back closing his knives and returning them to his boots.

"I think they're leaving." Toph said facing up the slope.

With a strong gesture she lowered the wall she had raised.

"That was scary." Sokka finally said.

"Yeah..." The small woman agreed, but then a big grin found its way onto her face. "But hey we're The Blind Bandit and Meathead. Nobody can take us on and win."

"Yeah..." He joined her in the smile.

Inside Sokka knew that he had almost lost Toph, for a second time. And he couldn't let that happen without telling her the truth.

"Toph... I've got to tell you something." The young man said turning to the young woman and letting the smile fall from his face.

"What's wrong?" She wanted to know.

"Nothing's wrong." He told her. "It's just that I want you to know that...Well... I love you. And I don't mean that I like you. I mean that I love you. And not like a sister, or as a friend, but that I love you like someone I want to spend the rest of my life with. Like someone I want to make babies with, and grow old with, and live forever with just so I can spend more time with you."

"But... What about...Suki?" She asked.

"I don't love her the way I love you." He told her. "I can't go a second without thinking about you, and I've gone months and never thought of her for a second."

It was quiet between the two of them. Sokka cleared his throat with a little cough.

"I know that this will end our friendship, and I hate that." He finally admitted. "You can't be friends with someone that loves you. It gets too awkward. It's just that I couldn't risk never telling you how I feel. I love you Toph. I love you so much I forget to breath sometimes."

The young woman stood there for a second or ten with her head down. She wanted to say something but her heart was trying to beat itself to death against her ribs and her stomach had decided that now of all times would be a good time for it to turn into some sort of flying creature.

"What if..." She finally asked in a voice so quiet that Sokka had to lean down to hear her. "What if the other person loves you back? Can you still be friends then?"

"Well... Yeah I guess that could work." Sokka answered puzzled by the question.

"Ok... Then we're still friends." Toph squeaked out, never raising her head to face him.

"Oh... OK then." He agreed. "So can I kiss you then?"

"Not if I kiss you first." She told him, stomping her foot.

Sokka felt the ground give way beneath him as he dropped into the earthbent hole. Luckily he had been on the receiving end of so much earthbending over the last year that his body automatically reacted, absorbing the shock, and keeping him on his feet, even though he felt a twinge of pain shoot up his left leg.

When he looked up, he saw that he was just a little shorter than Toph was now.

The lovely earthbender stepped into the handsome water tribesman, and taking his head in her hands she brought her lips to his. Sokka wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her into his chest, kissing back for all that he was worth. Which from Toph's reaction was more than the entire Bei Fong fortune.

* * *

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To be continued:

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**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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Author's notes:

Hi All,

I apologize for the very long delay in getting this chapter out to you. If you've read it you will know just how important a chapter it is to the story and hopefully you will understand and forgive me for spending so much time on it. I only hope you find it worth the wait.

Thanks so much for reading.

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More Fanart; There is more fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

Normally I answer anonymous reviews in this section but there are so many since the last chapter and I want to get this one out, that I hope you will forgive me if I save the answers for a later chapter. I just want to thank everyone who has reviewed for taking the time to send one in.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	50. Chapter 50

I'll Walk You Home pt. 50

Chapter 17

pt. 1

Family

* * *

It was the barking of the fox/wolf that finally broke the kiss between the two young people.

Sokka's four footed friend had, apparently with some difficulty, dragged his sword belt out of the fog and onto the ancient road.

"Our stuff!" The tribesman said, slapping his hand on his forehead. "Toph I have to get those books if I can."

"Oh right!" Toph said, catching her breath.

The young man struggled out of the hole he was in and limped up to the old highway, the earthbender came along holding his hand. The fox/wolf waited impatiently for the couple to reach her, she then gave one more bark and scampered back into the fog.

Sokka buckled his weapons belt under his coat.

"You should probably stay here on the road." He suggested taking the blind woman's hand and squeezing it.

"Ok..." She grudgingly agreed. "But if you're not back by the time I count to sixty I'm coming in after you."

"Got it." He told her pulling her close.

"Kiss." He warned her moving his face down to hers.

They shared a quick light, wonderful kiss, and then Sokka was gone at a limping jog up slope into the fog and out of Toph's ability to sense him. She began to count in her head.

"Up here!" Sokka heard as he moved up the wagon track at his best speed.

He recognized the voice as Su-Kami's, and put on more speed, even though his left leg was very painful. Soon he saw the young woman standing above the two black sacks containing the books he had taken from the village.

Su-Kami's white skin faded easily into the dense fog. All the young man could easily distinguish were her dark hair, eyes, and dark pink nipples as she stood in the ancient track.

_Nipples?_ The thought passed through the fifteen year olds mind. _Crap she's naked!_ There also seemed to be too many of them. Sokka shifted his eyes to the two book sacks and kept his eyes low, especially off of the dark triangle only a little above the tops of the sacks.

"Thanks!" The teen said reaching for the knot joining the two bags, and hoisted them up onto his shoulder.

"I'll start bringing the rest of your packs down." The naked woman told him, her face close to the side of his.

She rubbed her face against his, her body moving against his arm, which felt very nice but a little odd. As if there were too many soft things on her chest.

"Ah... Thanks!" He told her as he began to move down slope to the ancient road.

"You smell so good." She told him as she released his arm and scampered up the slope.

.

Toph could just feel something, someone, coming down the slope in the fog. She was up to fifty-four when Sokka came out of the fog and stepped onto the ancient highway, and she could finally get a good sense of him.

"I got the books!" He cheered.

"Oh goody!" Toph replied in a dry tone.

"They're important Toph." He told her, lowering the sacks onto the road.

"And our stuff?" She asked.

"I'm going back for it." He replied moving back up into the fog.

"I'm counting." Toph told him.

"Give me to one eighty." He called back to her as he moved up the track.

It took Sokka three more trips to get the rest of their equipment, without Su-Kami's help he doubted he could have gotten any of it.

"I don't know how to thank you." Sokka told the naked woman, as she handed over the last of the bags.

She smiled, her tongue gliding between her sharp teeth, as she moved into him, rubbing her face against his.

"I'll think of something by the next time we meet." Su-Kami whispered in his ear.

Sokka felt her long dry tongue lick the side of his face. She smiled and turned, jogging up the track through the fog. The last he saw of her was her dark pony tail swaying against her bare back.

.

"From the lights, there looks to be a small village an hour or so down the road." Sokka told Toph as he strapped on his leg brace.

"Sounds good." The blind bender replied slinging her back pack on.

The sun was well down by now, in the sky over head stars could already be seen, to the west the sky was fading from red to black and large dark clouds blotted out the horizon.

Sokka slung his rucksack on his back and pulled on his duffle bag. The three food bags were all empty, pillaged by their pursuers, but everything else looked fine, except kicked around a bit. He checked the two heavy book bags. The contents were fine. The bags themselves were made for carrying books, heavy canvas and the outsides had a thick coating of tar and lacquer on them to protect against the weather. From the look of those clouds the books would need the protection.

"It looks like a storm is heading our way." The young man told his companion. "We could hunker down here and try for the village in the morning."

Toph thought a moment as she was shouldering her duffle.

"I'm hungry." She finally replied. "Let's try for the inn."

"Ok!" Sokka said standing up under the great weight of the books.

He held out his hand to the young woman. She grasped it with a little a squeeze and a smile, and the two started down the old road.

.

They were nearly to the village when the storm hit them. Both of them had their hats in their pockets and their coats open to cool themselves as they walked swiftly down the road. A strong gust of freezing rain hit them, blowing their coats open and soaking the two to the skin before they could get the flapping cloth under control.

Sokka finally grabbed Toph into a close hug to protect her from the winds so she could close and button her coat. Once sealed the coats did their job of repelling the cold wind and freezing rain but the damage had already been done. Toph was beginning to shiver.

"HOW MUCH FARTHER?" She shouted over the storm.

"MAYBE TEN MINUTES!" He answered.

"LET'S MAKE IT FIVE!" She responded taking his hand.

"RIGHT!" He shouted in return.

The two moved as fast as they could against the deluge and the wind, down into the village.

.

Kang stood behind the counter that doubled for a bar in "The Friendly Fisherman" the small inn he owned. The wind and rain beat against the windows of the common room and the pounding of the heavy rain on the roof two stories above nearly drowned out the quite conversations at the tables in the room.

The inn keeper saw the flash of light against the curtains and soon after heard the peal of not too distant thunder. This was the first bad storm of the season, and it was moving fast onto the little village by the old road.

Kang sighed. Business had been good for a short time at the start of the season but then traffic from the north had stopped about a month ago, and traffic from the south, mostly men who fished for sport had slowed and finally ended. The last two nights had finally been good with men coming down from the north heading home to Gaoling. The inn had been full last night and was almost full tonight.

But with the start of the storms travel would slow again, and guests would be few. It could be a hard winter this year, even if the war were actually over, as the proclamations claimed. Kang found this last hard to believe. The war with the Fire Nation had been going on all his life, and all his father's life and his father's father before him. It didn't seem possible that it would ever end.

"I closed and locked all the windows." A fourteen year old boy told the inn keeper.

Kang, pulled from his gloomy thoughts, looked to his son.

"Any leaks?" The father asked.

"No." The son replied. "We're safe and sound."

There was another peal of thunder, closer this time.

"Good." The inn keeper replied. "Well then put another log on the fire, it's a cold wind this night. Then get any dirty dishes into the scullery and tell your mother to go ahead and close the kitchen for the night. There won't be any more travelers on the road in this weather."

"Yes father." Bingwen answered with a small bow, before heading toward the hearth.

Kang saw another flash of lightning against the windows and was counting the seconds when the door to the inn flew open as thunder crashed outside. A fierce cold wind carried freezing rain into the room and the candles flickered and nearly went out, and a second strike of lightning illuminated the two dark travelers standing in the open door way.

"Close." The tall stranger dressed in black said in an undertone.

The smaller traveler, dressed in what could be white, in the right light, made no reply, she just clutched tighter to her companions arm. Thunder roared through the common room, shaking glasses, bottles, and dishes. The whole building seemed to vibrate from the sound.

Then the tall man in black pushed the door shut against the storm that resisted his efforts, but could not overcome his strength or will. And the rain and howling wind were locked out into the night.

"Any rooms left?" A deep rasping voice asked.

Kang had to think for a moment, mesmerized by the dark face and deep blue eyes of the man who had just spoken.

There were murmurs from the guests at their tables.

"It's them." Someone said.

"The Black Lotus." Another answered.

"The White Queen." A third said.

"Ah…, ahh… Yes of course." Kang finally replied. "You can leave your wet things by the door."

The inn keeper pointed to a row of pegs on a board attached to the wall by the door.

The tall man bowed in reply and the two began to divest themselves of all their heavy packs and bags, hanging their coats from two empty pegs.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the room.

"Close." The tall man said, placing an arm around the small woman and holding her close.

A crash of thunder shook the building, which when it had passed, caused another set of murmurs amongst the guests.

Kang looked back to the couple who were now standing in front of him, water dripping from their heads and clothes.

"I hate thunder." The small woman said through chattering teeth, her arm still around the waist of the tall young man beside her.

"Makes two of us." The man said in his deep raspy voice, his arm still around her shoulder.

"I only have two rooms left." The innkeeper apologized. "A small room, and the bridal suite. Both on the second floor."

This earned him a raised eyebrow from the young man and slight smirk from the shivering young woman.

The tall man cleared his throat with a little cough and in a much younger voice asked.

"Does the suite have an attached bath?"

"Oh yes." Kang answered. "With an actual bath tub and basin and its own commode. The suite also has a table with chairs, so you can take meals in your…"

The inn keeper was interrupted by another flash of lightning and the young man saying.

"Close."

The crash of thunder followed soon after the word.

"We'll take the bridal suite." The dark skinned man said, putting a large silver coin on the counter. "And we'll need hot water for the bath, and hot tea…"

"Oolong." The young woman stated.

"And hot food if you have any." The blue eyed teen continued. "Hot soup if you've got it."

"Of course." Kang replied, picking up the coin. "And we will be happy to dry your clothes and baggage in the kitchen over night for you, and any washing that you need done as well. Just leave your luggage there and my son will bring it up to the room for you."

"Sounds good." The tall man said. "What's the soup?"

"War Won Ton." The innkeeper answered.

"Enough for three." The dark teen requested. "With plenty of the good stuff."

Kang heard the ring of a second large silver coin spinning on the counter, he snatched it up.

"Of course sir." The older man said bowing to the couple. "Bingwen grab a candle and light our honored guests to the Bridal Suite."

Kang expected some response from the rest of the guests in the common room. A young couple taking the Bridal Suite for the night usually got some laughs and ribald remarks, but everyone was silent just looking at the young pair.

"Yes father." The son replied grabbing up a candle and moving to the stairs. "This way please."

"Not as close." The tall stranger said as another flash of lightning lit up the curtains.

It was a few seconds before the sound hit the inn, softer and farther off than the last one. The young woman released her hold on the young man, he took his arm from around her shoulders, then reached down and took her hand, leading her to the foot of the stairs.

Kang turned to the small serving window cut in the wall between the bar and the kitchen, and sticking his head in he told his wife.

"Ju! We have two more guests for the night. They want hot water for the bath, and hot tea and soup for supper, with plenty of the good stuff."

With this last he held up the two coins and smiled.

.

Sokka was leading Toph down the hallway following the boy with the candle. He could feel her shivering and could just hear her teeth quietly chattering. He scooped her up in his arms, across his chest, and felt her wrap her arms around his neck as he held her. He also heard her squawk of protest as he lifted her off of the floor.

"Yeah I know…" He told her as he carried her along. "…You don't need any help and I'm being an asshole, but this whole place is made of wood and you can't feel a thing, and your freezing which is driving me crazy, so just think of it as you helping me, ok?"

"Ok." She answered snuggling as close to him as she could, she really was freezing.

"This is it." Bingwen said opening the last door on the right of the hall.

Sokka carried Toph over the threshold into the room. For a large room it was rather small. It was a corner room with windows in two of the walls and a large sturdy looking bed jutting into the room from the back wall.

"There's a stove over in the corner." The inn keeper's son said pointing to the far corner by the inside wall. "It's already, I'll light a fire as soon as I get some of these candles lit."

"Where's the wash room?" The dark skinned teen asked still holding Toph in his arms.

"Oh… Right here." Bingwen said moving to and opening a door in the right hand wall towards the back of the room.

The boy stepped through the door. Sokka followed him but stopped on seeing how small the bathroom was. It was long and narrow only about a pace or two wide and as long as the bedroom was deep. Bingwen was using his candle to light two candles on a wash stand in the far end of the room. The tribesman could see that the bath tub, was just that, a round wooden tub set on the floor. If Toph curled her legs up she should be able to sit in it.

"Thanks." Sokka told the younger boy. "We need the bath water right away, even if it is only lukewarm."

"I'll just light the heater and go get it." The boy said exiting the bathroom.

"That'd be great!" The tribesman replied stepping into the bathroom and kicking the door closed.

There was a flash of light from the one small window.

"Not too close." Sokka told the girl in his arms.

Toph gripped tight to the young man as she waited for the crash of sound. They stood holding each other for a few seconds before the thunder hit. Loud but not too close this time.

"Ok?" Sokka asked.

"Yeah." Toph replied.

He set her down on her feet by the bath tub.

"Need to get you out of those wet clothes." He told her reaching around her waist and undoing the back of her belt.

He set the heavy studded belt on the nearby stool, and turned back to the shivering girl, who was pulling ineffectually at the ties holding her over robe on.

"My hands are numb." She explained through chattering teeth.

"Here give them to me." He told her taking her hands and placing them on his face over his cheeks. "This is how mom used to warm our hands back home."

He covered her hands with his own for a few seconds then began to unbutton and untie her over robe. The wet fabric made it much more difficult then it normally would have been.

As Sokka worked on her clothes Toph held her hands to his face. His cheeks were warm and soon she regained feeling in her hands, tingling at first, almost painful, but as they grew warmer they stopped being lumps of ice and became hands again and she could feel his warm skin under them.

"Got it." He said opening the robe. "Put your hands down a second."

She did as he asked and she felt him slip the heavy wet over robe off of her shoulders and let it drop onto the floor. She was still freezing. As she felt his large hands begin to work on her next layer of clothes she reached out to find his face again. _After all your hands can't be too warm._ She told herself. She let her fingers trace the outlines of his strong features, as he squatted in front of her.

Soon the second layer was slipping to the floor. Sokka was trying to find the draw string to her pants when they heard a knock at the outer room door.

"Be right back." He told her as he stood up and moved into the main room.

Sokka crossed to the bed room door and opened it just as Bingwen was knocking again. The younger boy had a wooden yoke across his shoulders. Hanging from one end was a large wooden bucket full of cold water. On the other end was a large iron kettle, steam pouring from its spout.

"Be careful, the water is really hot." Bingwen warned as he set the bucket and the kettle on the floor by the door, and unhooked them from the yoke. "Mom was going to use it for the dishes. I'll bring up your baggage next. I'm sorry but the lady's bags are soaked through. They weren't oiled or tarred like yours. Mom is going to hang all of the lady's stuff up in the kitchen by the stove and it should be dry by mor…"

"Not too close!" Sokka called out interrupting the boy, in response to another flash of lightning.

"Thanks." Toph called from the bath room.

"Sorry." The tribesman apologized to the boy.

"No problem." The boy replied. "The soup will be ready soon, oh and the tea I'll bring it right up."

"Thanks." Sokka told him handing him a bronze coin.

"Thank you sir!" The boy said enthusiastically bowing his way out of the room.

The slow peal of distant thunder echoed through the room.

By the time Sokka had returned to the bathroom with the bucket and the kettle Toph had managed to get her boots, socks and pants off, leaving her in her under tunic and shorts.

"Let me get the tub ready. Warm water is the best way to fight the cold."

Toph continued to undress as he poured most of the contents of the kettle into the tub which filled the small room with warm steam. He then added cold water from the bucket until it was warm but not too hot. He turned back to the young woman who was now standing in just her loin cloth and breast wrapper. Both made of white cotton and both wet.

Sokka stood staring. He missed the flash of lightning from the small window and it was a good number of seconds before the distant peal of thunder brought him to his senses again.

"Here, get into the tub. That will warm you up." He told the girl.

He took her hand, helped her step over the rim, and soon she was standing in the hot water. It felt wonderful against her cold feet and calves.

"Go ahead and try to get under the water." He told her.

Toph sat in the tub and by pulling her legs up was just able to get most of her body under the water.

"Ohhhhh….." She let out a contented sigh as the trembling in her muscles stopped. "This is wonderful."

"Good!" He told her, still holding her hand.

He let her rest that way for a while, trying to keep his eyes on her contented face instead of inspecting her now very wet underclothes.

"Do you want some more hot water?" He finally asked.

"Yeah!" She said with gusto.

Sokka poured the rest of the hot water into the tub, being careful not to splash her.

"Oh yeah…" She crooned as the steaming water was added.

"Good?" He asked kneeling down by the tub and leaning in toward her face.

"Very!" She answered.

She reached out toward the sound of his voice and her wet hands found his face. She pulled him down farther and lifting her head she found his lips with her own. His hand moved down into the water to slide onto her waist, then up to her back, helping to support her, as they kissed.

The kiss was actually about six kisses, which were becoming more and more heated as they went on. Finally Sokka pulled away, against Toph's protests. He knew where this was going if he didn't stop it right now. His will power was failing miserably.

As he pulled away, Toph's hands dropped from his face to his chest, clutching at his damp robe.

"You must be freezing." She said as she felt his cold wet top.

"Not too bad." He replied in a deep husky voice.

He stood up and stared at the towel rack over the bathtub. She was far too cute and far too nearly naked in her wet underthings for him to be able to look at her. Standing and looking at the wall was by far his best option.

He pulled one of the towels from the rack and releasing his hair began to rub his head vigorously.

Toph lay in the tub with her knees up, swirling the hot water up onto her legs and chest.

"Sokka?" She asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah?" He replied, kicking off his boots while pulling off his wet top.

"So… before… what you said…?" She couldn't finish the question and shifted so her mouth was under the water blowing some bubbles.

"That I love you?" He asked removing his knife holders and toweling himself down.

Toph moved so that her mouth was up out of the water.

"Yeah…" She said.

"I meant it Toph. I really love you." He told her a little worry entering his voice.

Sokka draped the towel around his neck and squatted down by the tub, leaning on the edge, looking the young woman in the face.

Toph lay in the water, her face down, playing with the end of her long braid.

"So…" She finally said in a soft little voice. "Does that mean… I'm your… girlfriend?"

There was a distant peal of thunder, as Sokka smiled at the question.

"Yeah!" He told her. "It does."

Toph felt his large hand on her cheek tilting her head up towards the sound of his voice. Then she felt his warm moist lips on hers.

"So can I be your boyfriend?" He asked, his lips brushing against hers as he spoke.

Toph's hands rose up out of the water and traveled across his bare chest, up to the ivory choker on his long neck. She pulled herself up out of the water into a sitting position, finding his lips with her own. They stayed like that for some time. Their mouths exploring each other's lips, the steam rising around them from the hot tub, surrounded by the sound of the water in the tub, surging as Toph shifted, water dripping from her arms and body, the sound of the rain on the roof just above their heads.

Toph opened her lips to take in more of his mouth, her lungs beginning to burn for air, but she didn't care. She wanted this moment to continue to the end of time.

It was the knock on the outer door that finally broke the kiss.

.

Sokka answered the door in just his damp leggings with the towel around his neck.

It was Bingwen with the tribesman's back pack and a tray with a large tureen of steaming soup full of meat, vegetables, and wontons.

"I'll bring the tea and more of your luggage on the next trip." The innkeeper's son said trying to hide his smile. "And you can give me any clothes you need to dry then too."

"Thanks." The tall teen said ushering the boy out of the room.

_Newlyweds!_ Bingwen thought with a chuckle as he headed down stairs.

.

Sokka filled two bowls with the soup and brought them to the bathroom giving one to Toph who pronounced it,

"The best I've ever had!"

"Yeah!" He said sipping from his own bowl. "It's amazing what running for your life and being nearly frozen can do to enhance the flavor."

Toph laughed in agreement.

The two sipped then slurped in ravenous silence until Toph held out her empty bowl and demanded,

"More!"

"Anything for my girlfriend." Was Sokka's happy reply.

She felt him take the bowl from her hand, then she felt his hair trace across her face and his lips on hers in a gentle little kiss. As he pulled away, she got her hands on his head and pulled his head down, while pulling herself up out of the water and kissed him back, opening her lips to again capture more of his mouth.

The kiss went on for many seconds until Toph felt something wet move across the opening of her lips. The feel of whatever it was surprised her and she released his head, which caused her to slip back into the water.

She heard a deep chuckle from Sokka as he stood up, and went to get more soup.

_His tongue!_ She finally realized, as she lay in the water playing with her braid. _That's kind of gross!_ But for some reason thinking about it caused her heart to beat faster and that little warm tickle deep inside her to start up again. Her right hand let go of her braid and began to fondle the stone at her neck.

"Got another one for you."

She heard him say breaking her thoughts. She sat up straighter and reached out. Sokka placed the bowl in her hand and sat down on the stool again.

The two slurped the soup down. It felt warm and wonderful in their empty stomachs.

"More?" Sokka asked when he noticed she had finished the bowl.

"No, I'm good." She told him, holding out the empty dish.

He snatched it from her hand, before she could grab him. She laughed at being foiled.

"Sokka?" She asked in a serious voice.

"What?" He asked in reply.

"Just this." She told him, cupping both hands and throwing the trapped water at the sound of his voice with a wicked, gleeful laugh.

"Thanks sweet heart." He responded.

She could tell she had hit him in the face and laughed.

"Anytime, boyfriend."

There was a knock on the outer door.

"That's the tea." He told her.

"Good." She proclaimed.

.

Bingwen was at the door when the tribesman opened it. The innkeeper's son had another tray, this time with a large tea pot and two cups. Across his shoulders were the two book bags and Sokka's nearly empty duffle bag. The younger boy was staggering under the weight.

Sokka took the tray and placed it on the table as the boy dumped the bags alongside the back pack at the foot of the bed.

Bingwen got the dirty dishes on the tray and headed for the door.

"I'll get the wet clothes on the next trip." The boy explained.

"Thanks, that'll be great." Sokka said closing the door.

.

Bingwen deposited the tray of dirty dishes on the counter/bar by his father.

"What are you doing?" Kang asked. "Take those to the scullery."

"Mom won't let me in the kitchen." The boy replied.

"Why not?" The father asked.

"She didn't say." The son answered.

The boy moved off into the common room picking up any empties and asking if the guests wanted anything else. Kang turned and placed the tray of dishes on the counter of the serving window to the kitchen.

"Ju!" He called through the window.

His wife, who had been hanging the young woman's wet clothes on a line near the stove, came over and took the tray.

"Why won't you let Bingwen into the kitchen?" Kang asked through the opening.

"I'm hanging up that lady's clothes and some of them shouldn't be seen by our son." She whispered to him, as she took the tray to the sink.

The innkeeper stuck his head through the window and noticed the delicate, lacy, silk items hung up around the stove.

"Indeed!" Kang said, then he suggested. "Maybe we can do some shopping for you the next time we go to the city."

"As if I could wear things like that." The woman scoffed.

"You wouldn't have to wear them for long." Her husband said with a sly grin.

"Out of my kitchen." Ju told him, blushing furiously.

She pushed his face back out through the window and dropped the curtain that closed the opening. In large characters painted on the curtain were the words. "The Kitchen is Closed".

.

Toph was sitting in the tub and Sokka was sitting on the stool as the two sipped their tea. He was trying desperately to keep his eyes on her face, and not on the nearly invisible pieces of cloth that covered what little of her lovely body was actually covered.

"More tea?" He finally asked.

"Just a little." She told him with a contented sigh.

Toph lay in the warm water, letting her body slide under up to her chin. The bath was starting to cool but it was still warm and comfortable. Actually it felt wonderful. It was one of the few times in her life that she enjoyed being in a tub full of water.

The hot food, the warm water, and the sound of the water dripping from the roof, the rain must of stopped, and now it was just the sound of the run off. It was amazingly peaceful. She could hear the sounds of Sokka, through the closed door, in the other room. The air was heavy with the warm steam from the hot tub.

She heard someone say her name. It was distant and in a wonderfully deep and resonant voice. His voice, the voice he used when he spoke of Yue.

"Mmm?" She hummed in reply.

"Toph? Come on. Time to get you out of those wet clothes and into a warm bed." He told her.

"Mmmm!" She responded, opening her eyes and shifting to sit up in the tub.

Sokka helped her to her feet, the air of the room cool against her wet skin. He then helped her out of the tub, standing on a towel he had laid on the floor. Toph was slowly coming back to herself as she felt a large towel fall across her shoulders and Sokka's large strong hands begin to rub her back.

She worked on the knot on her breast band, struggling with the wet cloth, finally getting it untied and pulling the wet cloth off. She held it out to the side.

"Woah!… Okayyyy…" The tribesman said, reaching from behind her and taking the cloth from her.

Toph pulled the towel around her and began to rub her chest and stomach dry. She heard the sound of water falling as Sokka wrung the water out of the soaked breast binder into the tub. She then heard the thump of the cloth as it landed over by the door and a gurgle as Sokka pulled the plug and began to drain the tub.

As she dried herself she felt a great yawn take hold of her and she had to tilt her head back to accommodate it.

The feel of a towel rubbing up and down her leg woke her up though. Sokka now squatting behind her had his hands wrapped in a towel and his long fingers completely encircled her right leg. He shifted over to her left and ran the cloth up and down, drying her and causing her skin to warm with his vigorous touch.

"I'll let you finish." He told her gathering up the wet clothes and towels from the floor.

"Can you unhook my chain?" Toph asked, wrapping the towel on her shoulders around her chest and turning towards where she heard the young man.

"Aaaa… Yeah… Sure…" He answered a little uncertainly.

He tossed the wet bundle over by the door and squatted in front of the just about as naked as you could be without actually being naked beautiful young woman in front of him.

The towel she was wearing actually covered her from the waist up, and he had to raise the hem just to find the belly piercing. But it did not cover the area of her wet, basically see through, essentially the definition of invisible, downright dripping, and next to useless as a barrier to sight, loin cloth. With a tremendous act of will he kept his eyes on her stomach.

"Let me get a light." He told her.

Sokka turned, and using his long arm, pulled a candle from the wash stand behind him. Holding the flame close he examined the ring holding the chain to her naval. He had to spin the ring a couple of times to find the clasp part.

Toph stood shifting from one foot to the other as she felt his warm fingers brushing and touching her stomach. Trying desperately to not rub her legs together to relive the burning, nagging little itch she was suffering somewhere below her stomach, all thoughts of sleep long gone from her mind.

"Ok!" He said in discovery. "This works like the earring Zoltan gave me."

He put the candle back and began to work on the ring. Toph felt his hands on her skin and a little pull on the ring. Then she heard a click and the ring moved and it was gone. Then she felt Sokka's lips cover her naval as he gave her a strong loving kiss.

"All better." He said pulling away.

He stood up, his hand brushing against her cheek, she tilted her head into the touch, her right hand moving out from the towel to brush her fingers across the muscle and bone of his bare chest.

"Kiss." He said in warning.

Then his lips gently touched hers, his hair tickling her face as it fell forward. Her left hand followed her right moving onto his skin, the towel slipping down off of her shoulders, only being caught by the crook of her elbows. Their lips joined opening and closing, pulling and finding, drawing each of their mouths closer.

Far too soon, Sokka pulled back.

"I'll let you finish up." He told her, his voice deep and cloudy.

Toph turned away, pulling the towel up around herself again.

Sokka turned and blew out the candles on the wash stand, dropping the small room into darkness. He knew she would not need the light.

Moving past her he picked up the bundle of wet things and opened the door into the bedroom.

"I put my old water tribe robe on the door knob here." He told her tapping the metal handle. "So you'll have something warm and dry to wear."

"Thanks." She told him.

"You can just drop your loin cloth and towel by the door here and I'll get them later."

"Ok." She replied pulling at the knot holding her loin cloth on.

Sokka moved into the bedroom and closed the door. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh.

"Move!" He told himself.

The young man quickly dumped the wet things by the bedroom door, he then pulled off his leggings and the knife holsters strapped to his shins. He stripped out of his loin cloth and toweled himself dry. Pulling out his clean clothes bag from his back pack, he pulled out his second to last clean loin cloth. It was one of his old ones, but it was clean. The only one he had left now was the ink stained one.

The room was cool, the heater in the corner had done some of its job but the room was far from warm. Sokka crossed to it and added a little more wood and closed some of the vents to bank the fire down for the night. He then moved around the room snuffing out the candles leaving just the one on the night stand on the right side of the bed.

A knock on the suite door grabbed his attention, and he opened the door to find Bingwen standing there.

"Oh right!" Sokka said in understanding.

The tribesman pulled up the bundle of wet things and handed them over to the younger teen.

"Breakfast is served till ten." The innkeeper's son said.

"Sokka?"

Both boys turned at the sound of the young woman's voice and saw in the dim light a white arm extending out into the room from the bathroom doorway, at the end of which was a white, wet loin cloth.

"Oh, thanks!" Sokka said striding over and taking the offering.

"And here's this too." Toph said as the hand pulled back into the crack between the partially opened door and the frame.

It returned with the large towel, which Sokka took from her. All he could see through the small opening was a line of white skin from the floor to the dark mass of hair, and a faint glint of misty green in the lone candle light.

"Got it." He said taking the towel.

Sokka crossed to the door to the suite and placed these last items on top of the bundle in Bingwen's hands.

"Breakfast till ten." The dark teen said in confirmation.

"Yes." The younger boy said. "I'll bring your clean things up around nine if that's alright."

"That's fine." Sokka said.

"Then goodnight." The innkeeper's son replied turning down the hallway.

"Good night." The tribesman answered, closing the door.

_._

_Newlyweds!_ Bingwen thought with a grin as he moved down the hall. He was going to have to turn that mattress tomorrow, and maybe tighten the bed as well.

.

Toph had a bit of a struggle figuring out how Sokka's old top went on. She had never worn anything quite like it before; sleeveless with the large side openings. Eventually she thought she had it on right. It was small on Sokka but large on her. She felt rather exposed in it, not having anything on underneath. The side vents went all the way past her waist to her hips, and the front bias was open well below her chest, the hem of the bottom stopping about a third of the way down her thighs.

The robe was old and felt very comfortable on her, the material soft and warm against her skin, though as she moved, it rubbed teasingly against her nipples and breasts. The top also smelled of campfires, and ice, and meat, and blood, and war and peace, and sarcasm. It smelled of Sokka and she loved it, and she inhaled deeply of his scent.

.

Sokka pulled down the quilt, blanket, and top sheet on the bed. He blew out the last candle and went to the window by the bed in the eastern wall of the room. The storm had passed and he opened the curtains to look out into the night. The world was still dripping and cold but clean and new. Just rising above the horizon was a half moon, large and white against the black edge of the world, its white light shining down on the dripping land.

"You are very beautiful tonight." He told Yue.

"What?" Toph asked from the bathroom doorway.

She had not heard what he had said.

Sokka turned and looked at the sound. The moonlight streamed through the window and fell upon the young woman standing on the other side of the room.

Toph's hair was down out of its braid, falling in black waves around her. Her pale green eyes shone in Yue's light, the green stone at her neck matching the hue of her eyes, the silver chain just visible against her fine pale skin. On her arm the black band of metal from the sky. The blue robe she had on revealing and covering her. It showed the soft swell of her small breasts just visible in the open front. Her white strong arms fully reveled; her right casually extended the hand touching the frame of the door way, the swell of her hips just visible. And the white curve of her legs silhouetted against the darkness of the room behind her.

Sokka forgot to breath.

"You are very beautiful tonight." He finally said his voice deep and strong.

Toph lowered her face and her left hand moved from her side to the exposed skin over her breast bone, touching it. With a small motion she pulled the sides of her robe closed a little. Her hand then wandered up to the stone at her throat her thumb stroking the boomerang etched on the back side.

"Ah… The bed is about five or six steps in front of you." Sokka told her, tearing his eyes away.

"Thanks." She told him.

She let her right hand drift along the back wall of the room as she moved with sliding steps towards the bed. She lowered her left hand out in front of her at the level of her hips.

Sokka walked towards the bed from the opposite side. They reached it about the same time and climbed into it. He pulled the covers up over both of them.

He shifted into the middle, lying on his side, propped up on his left elbow, his forearm under Toph's pillow. His right hand moved to her waist and pulled her to him, as she lay on her back. He shifted his right leg over hers and she looped her leg around his, moving her hips into him, until she made contact with his stomach. Her hands moved to his chest and began to explore the bare skin and strong muscles under it. She loved the feel of Sokka's skin.

"Kiss?" He asked.

In answer she sent her hands up his chest to his face and pulled him down to hers. His lips rough, moist and warm, his mouth open came to her lips and their mouths joined, his lips pulling and teasing hers. She answered by following his lead, opening her own mouth to take in more of his lips, pulling his face tighter against her own.

His body shifted, half on top of her own, their chests meeting, his stomach against her hip. His right hand moved through the side vent of her robe, onto her skin, stroking up to the bare skin over her ribs, his thumb on her chest resting just below her small breast.

The kiss continued, Toph wrapping her arms around his neck, her hands moving up to the back of his head, twining through his long hair, pulling him closer, to feel the strong pressure against her mouth. His body followed, his hard chest against her soft breast. His right hand moving down her body, still inside the robe as it shifted from her side to her stomach and then up onto her chest again, stopping just short of her breast.

She didn't want him to stop. The shifting material of the robe had pulled and rubbed against her skin, teasing the hard bud at the end of her breast, and she wanted more, more touching, more kissing, more Sokka. She could never have enough of him.

She began to rub her legs together, shifting one knee up and then the other, to try and relieve the burning inside her. As she moved her right leg she felt her thigh brush up against his groin, and with a sharp movement he pulled his hips back, away from her.

Sokka slowly began to pull back from the kiss, shifting his right hand back down to her waist. Toph held him down for a time but eventually she relented and let him break free. They both lay there panting softly.

"Toph, I love you so much." He finally told her, his voice horse, and foggy, the words drifting across her face with his breath.

Toph's only reply was to send her arms from around his neck to around his chest and pull herself into a fierce hug, trying to pull his body into her own to make one thing out of the two bodies. Sokka's hand and arm moved around to her back still inside the robe and hugged her back with even more strength. She always forgot just how strong he was. He was so gentle with her.

Eventually the hug faded and the two lay there, letting their breathing and their hearts settle. Toph on her back, Sokka suspended half on top of her.

She slid her leg up his again, her foot moving along his calf, her inner thigh moving along his. She felt him shift his hips again, moving away from her.

As he shifted Sokka saw a worrisome thought move across Toph's face.

"You ok?" He asked her.

Toph, who had just realized why he was moving away from her, had remembered a concern she had.

"Yeah…" She told him thinking.

She didn't know how to tell him this, it would probably ruin everything and she had hoped she would at least have a day or two before she had to tell him, so she could have enjoyed having him for at least that time. But it was not something she could hide for long and she had better get it over with.

"Sokka…" She finally said, dropping her hands down onto her chest, nervously pulling the bias of her robe closed. "I… ahhh…"

"What's wrong Toph?" He asked his voice full of concern. "I'm sorry if I came on too strong just now. I just really love you and I got carried away."

"No! Oh no, it's not that!" She told him "It's about me…"

"What?" He asked, afraid that he had hurt her in some way.

"Well… It's just… well…" She was obviously afraid, and nearly in tears by now.

"Toph, I'm so sorry." He began.

"No!, No!" She told him. "You're fine. It's just that… Well… Since I'm… I'm your girlfriend…"

"Yes?" He asked, worry now in his voice. "Don't you want to be?"

"Oh yes! More than anything!" She declared. "But… It's just that… Since I am…"

"Yes?" He prodded.

"Well you're… going to want… to… to shove... your... dickupmypussyanditwon'tfit!" She said the last part all in a rush, and covered her face with her hands at the admission.

"What?" Sokka asked, not quite sure what she had just said.

"It won't fit!" She declared. "I checked. I mean I didn't get a good feel for how big Humongous Sokka is, but from what I could tell he's enormous and little Toph is tiny. I could hardly get my little finger up there, so there is no way that your dick is ever going to fit. I must be deformed. Maybe because I'm blind, I don't know. I just know that Humongous Sokka is never going to fit. So if you want to break up with me that's ok, I'll understand."

Tears welled up in Toph's eyes at this last admission and began to roll down the side of her face.

"Oh Toph!" Sokka said. "I love you. I'll never break up with you."

"Really?" She asked fighting back her tears.

"Yes!" He told her, kissing one of the tears sliding from her eye. "You're amazing and I love you, and there is nothing wrong with you. You're perfectly normal."

"I'm not!" The tears began to well again. "I checked!"

"Wait just let me explain, ok?" He asked her.

She could hear the concern and understanding in his voice, so she relented and let him talk.

"Ok, first you're perfectly normal, except for being the most awesome person in the world which is not normal in the least." He told her with a smile in his voice. "And your being blind has nothing to do with Teeny Tiny Toph. Ok?"

"It's not teeny tiny." She defended herself.

"Alright, fine." He agreed. "I just like the sound of it, ok?"

"Ok." She agreed sniffing back her tears.

"Alright, number two…" He began.

"This is one of your puzzles you're solving!" She told him a little grumpily.

"Yeah… kinda… let me finish. It will all make sense by the end." He replied.

"Ok." She allowed.

"Two. We're just kids Toph, both of us. We're too young to be having sex. We have plenty of time, years even." He explained.

"Years?" She asked surprise and disappointment warring with each other in her voice.

"Yes, years. We're not even fully grown yet." He told her.

That seemed to comfort her.

"Do you really think I'm going to change so much that Humongous Sokka will someday fit inside me." She asked, then she thought. "But won't humongous Sokka keep growing too and become even bigger. I'll never catch up."

"Toph, we're both going to stop growing at some point, so yes you will catch up. But that's not the point I'm trying to make here." He explained.

Sokka rolled off of his girlfriend and scooted up the bed to prop his back against the head board as he continued to explain what he meant. Toph pushed herself up the bed until she was sitting beside him against the headboard.

"What I'm saying is that we could have sex now if we wanted to but we shouldn't. We've got lots of time. Who knows, tomorrow you may wake up and decide that you can't stand me and never want to see… well not see… feel me near you ever again. People change, and we've just gotten together. We should take our time."

"But I won't change, not in the way I feel about you." She told him.

He reached down and took her hand, interlacing his fingers with hers and pulling it up to his chest. She could feel his heart thumping against the back of her hand as he held it there.

"And I'll always love you. But people do change, so it's best to give it some time." He told her.

"Ok." She agreed. "But I thought you had shoved… had sex with Suki? You didn't wait with her."

"No Toph and that was a mistake. We were not ready for that. We thought we were in love and we were scared that we wouldn't have any tomorrows and so we had sex and eventually it ruined what we had. I don't want that to happen to us."

"So you don't want to have sex with me?" She asked striving to keep the hurt out of her voice.

He shifted again, still holding her hand to his chest but he was now sitting cross legged on the bed facing her.

"Toph, I love you. And because I love you I want to have sex with you. I want to have sex with you right now." Then in a silly voice he told her. "You're being beautiful helps a lot." Then in a more serious voice he went on. "But it's because I love you that I want to have sex, not because I want to have sex that I love you."

He dropped his head for a moment, thinking.

"I think that sex is important, I didn't always but I've changed I guess." He finally tried to explain. "To some people sex doesn't mean anything, it just feels good. To others it's just some sort of game to play. To me it's all about how much you love someone."

He pulled her hand tighter to his chest as he leaned forward becoming very serious with her.

"When you have sex with someone it should mean something. That you are serious, that you want to be with that person, hopefully for the rest of your life. That you want to make a family with that person. Because that's what happens. You have sex, eventually you are going to make a baby, and that really changes everything. And you better be ready for that. You should want that."

"I want that with you. I want us to be a family and have children and grow up and old together. But there are still things I want to do, and I know there are things that you want, that neither of us will be able to do if we are raising a child. So until we are ready, which will be years from now, I don't think we should have sex. Even though I really want to. So now, if you want to break up with me I'll understand."

Toph reached out with her free hand finding his face, and shifting onto her knees leaned forward and kissed him.

"I'll always want to be with you." She told him, and kissed him again as proof.

"Good, because you'll have a hard time getting rid of me now." He told her, joy and love filling his voice.

"So…" She said leaning back on the headboard. "If you're not going to shove Humongous Sokka up Teeny Tiny Toph, what's the point of being boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"Well it means we get to hang out together." He explained.

"We've been doing that for almost a year." She replied.

"Yeah… I guess… but it also means that I can do this." He told her releasing her hand and reaching out holding her chin and bringimg his lips to hers."

"Well that's ok then." She said with a smile after he broke the kiss. "I guess it's worth it then."

"I'm glad you think so." He told her shifting so that he was sitting beside her against the head board again. "There are other things we get to do too, but we can wait a little while and figure them out for ourselves."

"That sounds like fun." She grinned, taking his hand again. "What sort of things?"

He switched hands, and swung his left arm over her shoulder pulling her close against his side. She leaned in, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder and adding her other hand to the one holding his against her thigh.

"Well like playing healer." He told her

"I thought we were too old to play healer." She told him

"Well there are more advanced forms of the game that you have to be old enough to play." He explained. "And if we get good enough we could even give each other oral exams."

"What's that?" She asked curious now.

"I'll give you an example in a year or so." He told her with a grin.

"Can't wait." She said with a nasty little laugh.

"So I'm normal?" She eventually asked.

"In regard to Teeny Tiny Toph, yes. It's everything else about you that is amazing." He told her.

"I still don't see how I can ever grow big enough for you to fit in me." She told him. "Of course I would have a better idea if I could actually use my hand to see just how big Humongous Sokka is."

"No!" He declared. "Maybe when we're older."

"Seriously I'm going to have to grow like a hundred times if you're ever going to fit." She told him, worry starting to enter her voice again.

Sokka thought for a minute. Did he really want to have this conversation. He knew he would have to explain all this sometime.

_Yeah in like four or five years._ He told himself. _And maybe by then her mother will have finally explained it to her._

Sokka didn't think there was much chance of that. Finally he made his decision, took a deep breath and started a conversation he never thought he would have.

"Toph, do you know what a virgin is?" He asked her.

"Hmmm? No. I think I've heard that word before but I'm not sure where." She answered.

"Ok… Well a virgin, or someone who is virgin, is someone who has never done something before." He explained. "Usually it is used in regard to sex. So since you have never had sex you are a virgin."

"Ok." She said thinking about what he had just said. "Is that important."

"No not really." He told her. "Except for one thing."

"What?" She asked becoming suspicious of where this was going.

"Well since you're virgin…" He paused to clear his throat. "And since you're a girl…"

"Of course!" She interrupted suspicion being replaced by anger.

"You still have the Hand of Tui on you." He finished.

"Ahhh fuck!" She cursed, pushing herself off of him and sitting up to face him. "What has that bitch done this time. I bet it involves pain and blood again, doesn't it?"

"Well…" He said in a wheedly little voice. "Yes, but it's only once this time."

"Shit!" She said in resignation. "And boys don't have anything like this, do they?"

"Well… No, they have the hand of La holding their balls up but he lets them go when you get to a certain age, and it doesn't hurt." He explained.

"Great! You get away with everything." She said hitting him on the chest. "So what's this Hand of Tui?"

"Ok, so this is how my Gran Gran explained it." He told her holding up his hand and guiding her fingers to it.

"So this is Tui's hand." He told her, letting her fingers explore his hand.

He had his hand cupped as if he was holding something with all his fingers closed. He then opened a small space between his thumb and his forefinger.

"And this is your… opening. You know down there." He told her.

"Ok…" She responded, suspicion coming back into her voice, as her fingers felt the opening. "Hand puppets, I'm getting hand puppets."

"Hey, this is how my Gran Gran explained it to me." He told her defensively. "So any way the entrance to your baby home..."

"My what?" She asked skeptically.

"Your baby home. You know where the baby will grow inside you." He told her, fighting to not wipe the cold sweat from his forehead.

"Ok…" She finally relented.

"That's down here, at the bottom between the thumb and the rest of the hand." He explained guiding her fingers to where he was indicating.

"Ok." She was starting to get a little tired of this explanation.

"Now... ok, can you feel the piece of skin between my thumb and the rest of the fingers?" He asked.

"What? This?" She asked rubbing the flap of skin in the hollow of his thumb.

"Yeah that." He told her. "Except on Tui's hand it's a lot bigger and almost covers the whole entrance to your baby home."

Toph thought back to when she had checked to see if Humongous Sokka would fit inside her, and what he was saying was starting to make some sense.

"Ok…" She finally agreed.

"So when a girl has sex for the first time." He lowered his hand. "The boy…"

"You" She corrected.

"Ok me. Well when we have sex…"

"When you shove your dick up my pussy."

"Yeah…" He sighed. "I'll have to tear through that flap of skin."

Sokka was surprised that she let him finish.

"Tear?!" She asked in a dark dangerous voice.

"Yeah…" He affirmed.

"As in rip?!" She asked.

"Yes." He answered.

"So to have sex you have to rip a hole in me?" She demanded.

"Well… yes." He admitted.

"Does it hurt?" She demanded.

"The girl?" He asked.

"Of course the girl." She shot back angrily.

"Yes." He confirmed.

"I'll bet there's blood and bleeding too, isn't there?" She asked.

"Yeah, there's blood too." He answered.

"What a bitch!" She proclaimed.

"Tui is a loving and generous spirit." Sokka answered back coming to the moon's defense. "She sacrificed herself for the entire world!"

"This is because she's your ex-girlfriend isn't it? She hates me because you two broke up." Toph said in understanding.

"We didn't break up. We were never together." He told her.

"That's even worse." She fired back.

"Besides it's not just you, Toph." He tried to mollify her. "Every girl has to go through this."

"Yeah right!" She replied skeptically.

"And it's no fun for the guy either." He said. "It hurts doing that to someone you love emotionally and physically."

He remembered back to his first time with Suki. He had tried to be gentle with her which had been a disaster, and it had taken him three times to finally break through. It had been a miserable experience for both of them, and he had caused her needless pain, though the Kyoshi warrior had never admitted it, or gave any outward show of suffering.

"Oh well so sorry." Toph responded thick with sarcasm. "So do I get to rip a hole in you?"

"No." Sokka said in defeat.

"Nooooo!" She mimicked him. "So what else?"

"What?" He asked confused.

"There have to be even more gifts from Tui for me." She told him, anger very evident in her tone. "So what else?"

"No, that's it. The skin doesn't grow back, it's just the first time that is really bad." He told her trying to placate her. "Unless you get pregnant of course. That starts a whole n'other series of gifts."

"I don't want to hear it!" She told him.

She shifted around on the bed, scooting down under the covers, which caused the bottom of her robe to ride up around her waist. She hurriedly pulled it down to cover herself. She lay there for some time thinking.

"Being a girl really sucks." She finally said. "I wish I had been born a guy."

"I'm glad you're a girl." Sokka said lying down next to her. "If you were a guy you'd just be like Aang or Zuko. Since you're a girl you are who you are. Toph Bei Fong, the most amazing, powerful, beautiful girl in the world, and I love you."

Toph thought about that for a moment. She eventually rolled over towards Sokka and pulled herself up onto his chest. She found his face with her hands and kissed him.

"Well I guess there are some good parts to being a girl." She finally relented. "So... when can we play healer?"

* * *

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To be continued:

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**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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Author's notes:

Hi All,

Sorry for another long wait for the chapter, but at least this was a long chapter for you. Not very exciting but it had some fluff in it and I felt that Toph and Sokka deserved some fluff.

I really felt the last scene was important for the story and the characters I only hope that I did them justice.

Thanks so much for reading.

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Fanart; There is fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

I'd like to thank all the guest reviewers for their criticism and support. I really am trying to get better at this and need all the help I can get.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	51. Chapter 51

I'll Walk You Home pt. 51

Chapter 17

pt. 2

Family

* * *

The first time that Toph woke she just lay in bed next to Sokka and listened. There were Meathead's snores of course. And the sound of bird song from outside but that was about it. From this she determined that it must be very early and decided to go back to sleep. So she curled up against the warm tribesman and nodded off.

The second time she woke up there were no snores and no birds. She could hear someone, Sokka no doubt, shuffling around the room on bare feet. He was probably practicing one of his weapons forms. There were other sounds as well, quiet talking, people moving, doors opening and closing. She determined that it was well into morning and she should probably get up.

She pulled herself up in the bed, her head emerging from under the covers, and sniffed the cool air in the room. It smelled of wood smoke, and the delicious aroma of food cooking down stairs.

"Hey girlfriend." Sokka greeted ending his practice with two sharp clicks as he folded the Travelers knives in his hands.

Toph heard the young man come over to the bed and felt him lie down on top of the covers beside her.

"Hey boyfriend." She replied, sending her arms out towards where she felt he was.

"You're dressed!" She exclaimed as her hand found his chest.

"Yeah, I put a note on the door and they brought our stuff up early." He explained. "Your bags are against the back wall just past the nightstand on your side of the bed."

"Thanks." She told him finding his head with her hand and pulling it down towards her own.

They kissed good morning a short lovely little kiss.

They lay there for a few moments just enjoying the closeness of one another.

"So…" Sokka finally said his forehead up against the side of her head. "Do you want to get back on the road or do you just want to hang out here for the day?"

"How far are we from Gaoling?" She asked.

"Well I don't have my map but I would say a day, maybe a day and a half." He answered.

Toph thought. Then she decided. Earthbenders meet things head on.

"Let's keep going." She told him. "But after breakfast! I'm starving."

"Me too!" He told her.

"You're always starving!" She reprimanded him.

"Doesn't mean I'm not hungry." He told her in a mock hurt tone.

"Ok, ok. I'll get up." She told him.

"I'll take my stuff down so you can get dressed." He told her, his arm finding her waist under the covers and pulling her to him. "Unless you want me to come back and bring your stuff down too?"

"I'll be fine." She told him

"Last kiss." He warned as he moved his head and she felt his lips on hers.

This kiss was longer and more emotional than the others but even it had to end.

"Ohhhh…" Sokka sighed pulling back. "I could really get used to that."

Toph smiled in reply. Maybe they could spend the day and another night here.

She felt him roll off of the bed and heard him bustling with all his gear at the foot of the bed.

_No!_ She decided. _They really should be on their way. _

She threw the covers off and got out of bed and felt for her own bags and clothes on the floor by the back wall.

Toph heard the door to the room open.

"Aaa… Toph." Sokka called from the door way.

"Yeah." She answered standing up.

It took the young man almost a minute before he remembered what he was going to say. She just looked too cute standing against the light of the window in his old water tribe top that was much too big for her, with her hair wild around her head.

"Sokka?" She finally asked.

"Oh, yeah." He said coming to himself. "Turn left down the hall, there's a door opposite ours and then about ten steps down there's another pair of doors opposite each other and then about maybe six or eight steps past those the stairs open out to the right. You've got one flight down, then a landing where you do a one eighty and a second flight that takes you into the common room."

"Got it. Thanks." She told him.

"Ok, see you down there." He responded going out and closing the door.

.

Toph took care of business and got dressed. She was afraid it would be a real chore but whoever had washed and folded her clothes had done an excellent job. They were piled with the loin cloth on top then the breast band, then the under shorts and so forth, so it was a simple matter to just take an item from the pile and put it on. The person had also washed her socks.

Once dressed she folded Sokka's old top and put it into her duffle bag. She checked the contents. She could tell that someone had emptied and refilled the bag, but everything was clean and neatly folded and the duffle had been repacked carefully so that each item was where she had originally packed it. She had no problem in finding anything.

Her new back pack had been treated in the same fashion. Whoever had washed and or dried her things had done a thoughtful and excellent job. She would have to leave them a silver as a tip.

.

Sokka sat at the table nearest the foot of the stairs and sipped his tea. He had no trouble grabbing this table although the common room was crowded this morning, since most of the guests were sitting near the fire or had wanted to avoid the high traffic area.

When he saw Toph coming down the stairs he stood, and called out,

"Hey Toph, over here."

He saw her head turn and as her foot landed on the wooden floor she moved in sliding steps towards him.

He got to her about half way to the table and she took his arm as he led her to her chair. After helping her out of her duffle and backpack he pulled her chair out for her, scraping the legs on the floor.

As she sat he bent down and whispered to her,

"Your hair smells nice."

She had brushed it using her lavender scented brush, into the long pony tail down her back. The comment made her blush prettily and drop her head.

The two sat sharing a cup of tea, and talking about what each would like for breakfast. Sokka wanted fried rice, which was not surprising. Sokka loved fried rice and would eat it with every meal if he could.

Kang brought a fresh pot of tea and took the couple's order. Before he left with the cold pot he quietly deposited two large silver coins on the table by Sokka's cup.

The young man raised an eyebrow to the innkeeper.

"The other guests insisted." Kang explained. "They most handsomely paid for your stay. They told me to tell you it was the least they could do for the two of you."

Sokka looked up and saw many of the other guests looking to him. He nodded to each face and received nods in reply.

Once Kang had left with their order Toph turned towards Sokka and suggested,

"You should probably check the room one last time before we leave."

"Good idea." He agreed. "I'll be right back."

The young man bolted up the stairs two at a time. The young woman sipped her tea. True to his word he was back before the food arrived.

"Good thing I did." He told her a little breathlessly as he sat down again. "I forgot your stomach chain thing on the night stand."

"Well I can't put it on now!" She told him. "Hang onto it for me."

"Right!" He replied stashing it in a pocket of his money belt.

Toph quickly checked to make sure she was wearing her armband and her necklace. She didn't remember ever taking them off but she wanted to make sure. They were there, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She also patted her pockets, though she never kept anything in them, but she felt something in her right pants pocket. Pulling it out she realized it was the stone that Sokka had given her a few days earlier.

Whoever had taken care of her clothes must have removed it to wash her pants and then returned it before they had folded them up.

_Definitely two silvers!_ The young woman thought.

"Sokka, give me some money." She demanded holding out her hand.

"Ok…" He said a little doubtfully.

He handed over the two coins that Kang had returned to him.

"Silver." He told her.

"Perfect!" She proclaimed with a wide grin.

"Why do you enjoy spending my money so much?" The young man asked.

"Because it doesn't cost me anything, Silly." She responded putting the coins in her pocket.

Bingwen brought the food then, hot from the kitchen. He was much more polite and deferential this morning to the young couple then he had been last night. After serving out the dishes, sweet rolls, a dish of honey, fruit, and chicken/pig fried rice. He tucked the tray under his arm and asked,

"Will there be anything else sir, madam?"

"No, this is fine. Thank you." Sokka responded trying not to drool.

"Then let me return this sir." Bingwen said placing on the table the bronze coin the darker teen had given him the night before. "The other guests got together and gave me a very generous tip. They told me to tell you, 'Tell them that their money is no good here.'"

"Well… alright. Please tell them thank you for us." Sokka told him.

"I will sir." Bingwen said bowing and leaving.

"This hero business isn't too bad." Toph observed with a grin, picking up a bun and dipping it into the honey.

.

Ju stood leaning up against the sink slowly sipping her tea. The last two days had been busy, especially after a month of almost no guests. To be full the day before, and nearly full last night, she was out of practice at cooking for so many people. Plus she had been up late taking care of all the washing and drying of that elegant lady's clothes. She had not seen the two special guests but she had to be very pretty, elegant, and small to be able to have such, well skimpy, but fine things.

"Ju!" Her husband called sticking his head through the serving window.

"What?!" She replied testily.

She had been going nonstop all morning after only two hours of sleep.

"The lady wants to thank you." Kang told her. "Hurry!"

Ju sighed, pulling her cooking hat off and used it to wipe her face of the sweat and cooking grease. She then pulled off her apron and threw it on the counter. She must look terrible but there was nothing she could do about it now.

Going through the swinging door she finally met the special guests that had caused so much discussion amongst the other guests and so much work for her. She was surprised at how young they were, only teens.

The boy tall, dark skinned, dressed in blue robe and leggings with a long black coat over all. He was armed with a long sword and some strange and frightening weapons hanging from his belt under the coat.

The girl, small and pale, dressed in yellow and green with an off white coat that matched the boy's in style. But she carried no weapons, yet she stood with an air of confidence and power, that only came with being a master bender.

They were a formidable couple for all their youth.

"My lady." Ju said bowing.

"Bowing." The tall boy said in an undertone.

The lady returned Ju's bow and then held out her hands to the cook.

"I just wanted to thank you for all you did for me last night." The girl told her.

Unsure at first Ju eventually reached out and took the girl's hands.

"Anything for the guests of the Friendly Fisherman." The innkeeper's wife replied.

Ju felt two coins being pressed into her palm, the lady then dropped her hands and bowed again. Ju caught by surprise was late in returning the bow. The young couple loaded up their gear and headed out of the inn onto the ancient road.

"Oma and Shu!" Ju said in quiet wonder, looking at the two coins in her hand. "I hope they come back again sometime."

She looked to her husband and held up the two coins.

"Maybe I will do a little shopping in town." She told him with a sly grin.

.

"Earth!" Toph cried out as her boots hit the ground outside of the inn. "How I've missed you!"

Sokka laughed at her joy and held out his hand to her. She took it and the two of them walked down the road.

.

The ancient highway followed the river out into low rolling hill country. The land on either side was divided up by low earthbent walls into pastures where animals grazed. Occasionally they would pass by a farm with tilled fields, the crops already harvested for the coming winter.

Even though the road was easy they took frequent breaks, Sokka's load of books being very heavy. As they walked or sat he would describe what he could see around them to Toph, and she would describe what she felt to him. The time passed quickly and easily.

As the hills gave way to more level ground the pastures gave way to more farms, with the occasional village, with a small inn. The two ate a good lunch in one of these, and Sokka bought some food and snacks for the road.

After lunch they started on the road again. Sokka had asked how far Gaoling was from there and was told about a day's walk.

"If you pushed it, you could probably get there sometime this evening." The innkeeper, a woman named Qiao, told him.

As they left the inn Toph pulled her boots and socks off. The day had been cold but the sun had warmed the earth up quite a bit. The blind bender relished the feel of earth under her bare feet again.

Sokka put the shoes and socks in his nearly empty duffle and the two were on their way.

.

They continued down the road for the rest of the afternoon. They passed through more villages and more farms. The villages grew larger as the day wore on. Occasionally a farm they would pass had little in the way of cultivated fields and a very large house. Sokka thought they were more estates than they were farms.

As they took their frequent breaks he noticed that Toph would take her horse stance and he could feel her send her bending out into the earth. He had a feeling she was looking for something, but when he asked she would just say something about enjoying barefoot bending again.

As the sun neared the horizon Sokka suggested they stop at an inn for the night, but Toph insisted that they push on, and even sped up her pace, towing him along down the road. He thought she was obviously looking for something, something she didn't want to talk about, so he trusted her and just went along, shifting the book sacks into a new position on his shoulders.

.

The sun was well down and the sky growing dark as Sokka sat by the side of the road trying to massage his aching shoulders. Toph was in her stance sending her bending out again when her head shot up and she ran over to him.

"Let's go!" She insisted, grabbing his hand.

"Give me a second!" He replied testily, as he pulled his packs and bags back on.

She waited impatiently for him to finish, and when he finally slung the heavy book bags on, she grabbed his hand and dragged him down the road at an even faster pace than before.

This went on for quite some time. Toph stopping every so often to check with her bending, and Sokka leaning on his knees panting and thanking Tui for the brief respite. Then she would grab his hand and drag him off again.

After about an hour of this, it was full dark with only the stars for light. The moon had not risen yet, and would not be up for some hours yet as Sokka knew. She pulled him off of the road onto a country lane going off to the right. It took all of his concentration to not trip on the uneven lane.

"Faster!" She commanded.

"Toph! What's going on?" He gasped out. "Where are we going?"

"Almost there!" She called back hauling him along by the hand.

Almost there meant another half an hour at least. They were in some field. Sokka would have collapsed if he didn't know that he would probably not be able to get up again if he did. So he stood bent over, hands on his knees while Toph stood a few paces away sending her bending out again.

"This is it!" She nearly shouted with glee. "Quick! Grab onto me."

"Now what?" He asked stepping in and hugging her awkwardly with all their bags and packs on.

"You'll find out." She told him with a big grin that he could just make out in the darkness.

Toph raised her arms and bent her knees. Sokka bent his knees and waited for the shock of being launched, but as her arms came down he felt the ground fall away underneath him. His stomach tried to replace his lungs somewhere in his chest, and he let out a high pitched scream of surprise and terror.

_Happy Place! Happy Place!_ He chanted in his head as he fell through the darkness, clutching to Toph for his very life.

After about an hour and a half, at least it felt that way to Sokka who was screaming the entire time, so it probably was less than a minute. The two landed with a thud, followed by a second thud as the young man's butt painfully hit the ground.

Sokka heard a grinding of earth over head as Toph closed the shaft they had come down.

"Take my hand." She said.

"I'd love to." He said angrily from the ground. "But I can't see it! As a matter of fact I can't see anything!"

"Oh… poor baby…" Toph began but was cut off.

"Not funny!" Sokka said rising painfully to his feet. "What's going on here Toph? What's all this about?"

"We're almost there." She answered just barely containing her excitement. "Just a little bit farther."

"Ok." He relented holding out his hand towards the sound of her voice. "But I really can't…"

He was cut off as Toph grabbed his hand and began to drag him off at a run.

Sokka realized that "little" was a relative term, especially when you were being dragged down, what he assumed was a tunnel from the echoes, in absolute darkness. It was probably only a half an hour or so in reality.

Toph would pull him off at an angle occasionally to the right or left. He tried to keep count and build a map in his head but he failed miserably. Finally she stopped and he stood panting again. From the echoes here he thought they were in some large cavern.

Toph released his hand and he felt a small trembling in the earth beneath him. He heard water dripping somewhere to his right but that was all.

"Toph…" He began but was immediately shushed by the earthbender.

"Quiet!" She whispered.

They waited for a while longer and then he felt it. An answering trembling coming up through the soles of his boots. More earthbending.

The sounds followed soon after. The sound of earth shifting, and something large moving over the ground. It had a hollow sound as if the sound was coming from a tunnel ahead of him. Sokka started to worry again.

_Ok… Earthbending?… giant animal?… yeah… Giant Badger/Mole._ He thought to himself. As he remembered they were even bigger than Appa, and the sky bison was an herbivore unlike badger/moles.

He felt Toph take his hand and squeeze it hard. He could feel her shifting and moving nervously beside him. _Oh this can't be good!_ He thought. He tried to find his happy place but there didn't seem to be any way to get there from here.

"Shuffles?" Toph whispered to herself hope coloring the word.

"Shuffles!" She repeated a little louder, recognition joining in with hope.

"SHUFFLES!" Toph shouted in unalloyed joy.

She let go of Sokka's hand and he could hear her bare feet slap against the stone as she ran towards the giant creature as it emerged from the tunnel into the chamber.

"Oh Shuffles!" The blind woman cried as she embraced the nose of the giant beast. "I've really missed you! It's been so long!"

Sokka stood in the dark and listened to the heart felt reunion.

The grunting, sniffing, sounds moved closer to the tribesman until he could feel the creature's warm breath, move back and forth across his face.

"This is Shuffles." Toph said from beside the warrior, apprehension apparent in her voice. "Shuffles, this is Sokka."

"Ahhh… Hi Shuffles." The young man said toward the breathing.

"Lick her nose." The bender told him.

"Ohhh…. Kay…." Sokka said reaching out in the absolute darkness.

He found the muzzle of the giant animal and moving in he gave the cold wet nose a long, and in his opinion, manly lick.

The beast seemed to think for a second, Sokka then felt a large wet tongue scrape up his face.

"SHE LIKES YOU!" Toph shouted in joy grabbing awkwardly onto the young man. "She really likes you."

Sokka hugged back, he then felt the blind woman's hands on his head pulling him down, and her lips on his. He kissed her back just so happy to be alive right now.

Toph broke the kiss and wrapping her arms around his neck laid the side of her face against his chest.

"She really likes you." The small bender said quietly in relief. "I'm so glad."

"Me too!" He said, his voice cracking high on the last word.

A large wet nose bumped the couple.

Toph laughed and patted the muzzle of the giant beast.

"I think she wants to join the hug." The bender said.

Sokka reached out and gave the badger/mole a long scratch along the ridge of her long nose.

There was an appreciative grunt from the animal in response.

"Where's Snuffles?" Toph asked the creature.

"Snuffles?" The tribesman asked. "And I'm raising my eyebrow."

"Snuffles is her… boyfriend." The bender explained.

"Shuffles and Snuffles?" Sokka asked sarcasm lacing the words. "And my eyebrow is even higher."

"I was six, ok!" Toph said defensively.

There was a grunt from the badger/mole and the two returned to their patting and scratching.

Soon enough the sound of a second beast could be heard approaching the trio.

"Snuffles!" Toph cried out in glee and ran off to embrace the face of the new giant.

Shortly a large wet nose was nudging the tribesman in the side.

"Sokka this is Snuffles." Toph introduced the pair.

"Hi Snuffles." Sokka said reaching out for the badger/mole's nose.

Without being bidden the young man licked the creature's nose. Snuffles licked back with a long, wet, raspy tongue.

"He likes you!" Toph exclaimed happily.

"Yeah…" Sokka began but was suddenly knocked over by an explosion of wet air as Snuffles sneezed.

Laying on the ground the tribesman felt something wet and slimy covering most of his head.

"Ah… Giant animal snot. How I've missed you." Sokka moaned sardonically.

The young man struggled back onto his feet where he received another lick from the male beast, removing most of the mucus.

"Thanks." Sokka told the creature gratefully.

It took about three more licks to get the rest off of him. He thought the creature also may have gotten some of his skin with the last lick.

"Stop playing around." Toph ordered taking the boys hand. "Shuffles and Snuffles are going to lead us home."

"Lead? Why don't we just ride them, it'll be faster." Sokka suggested.

"You can't ride wild badger/moles." The blind woman explained as if to an idiot.

"Why not?" The swordsman wanted to know.

"They're wild!" Toph exclaimed.

Sokka made a dismissive sound as he pulled his drum from its case where it was lashed to the top of his back pack. He slung it from his shoulder and began to tap out different rhythms.

"What are you doing?" She asked. "And I'm raising both my eyebrows and rolling my eyes."

"We should work on that eye rolling thing." He observed absently, still tapping on the drum.

Toph made a disgusted noise in reply to the criticism.

"Oh giant badger moles." Sokka sang to himself.

C

"Oh Giant Badger Moles"

He began to sing in earnest, striking the drum more forcefully.

C D

Oh… Great big Giant wonderful Badger Moles

How about giving us a ride

You wouldn't even feel us on your hairy hide

.

Shuffles is so nice and really really kind

You could give us a ride

And I don't mean inside

.

So how about it Shuffles

It wouldn't cost you much

And would save us a bunch

.

As he sang and played Sokka trailed one hand against the side of Shuffles as he moved down the animals flank. When he reached the foreleg he stopped playing the drum but continued to sing.

Now I'm gonna grab your hair

I'm sure it won't tear

And you won't shed a tear

.

Using the clumps of hair as hand holds the young man began to haul himself up the side of the great beast. He used his legs when he could, but his arms had to do most of the work, and the strain of pulling himself and all he was carrying was very evident in his voice as he continued to sing.

.

Sorry… Shuffles… for… pulling... your… fur

But… I… got… to… get… high… ur

And… it… won't… be… too… furrr….

.

His arms were burning with the strain by the time Sokka finally pulled himself up onto the broad shoulders of the badger/mole. She didn't seem to mind the boy climbing on her. Toph could feel Shuffles swaying her head slightly from side to side in time to the song, and the beast actually seemed to like the pulling on her fur as if it was a light scratching.

.

Well here I am, finally on top

Please don't knock me ker plop

'Cause… (He searched for the next rime) I'll… land like a mop

.

With his hands free he began to play along on the drum again.

.

So Toph come on up

Come on you can ally up

I'll toss you a rupe

.

Toph just shook her head in wonder. She couldn't believe that Sokka was still alive. But most of all she couldn't believe that he could make up such an awful song.

Toph I'll toss you a line

Come join me on Shuffles spine

That'll prove you're a girlfriend of mine

.

Toph earthbent a curving earth column that deposited her gently in front of Sokka on the female badger/mole's shoulders.

She sat cross legged leaning back into the tribesman's chest grasping his legs for support.

"You know?" She observed. "For an idiot you can be really smart sometimes."

"Thanks." He replied, still playing his drum.

.

Ok Snuffles please take us home

The roof can be flat or a dome

We'll stay there and never more roam

.

The giant beast gave a happy grunt and began walking swiftly towards the tunnel it had entered the cavern from.

"Duck!" Toph said leaning down.

"What?" Sokka asked in the absolute darkness.

"Duck!" She commanded reaching back and pulling his head down.

Sokka could feel something brush against his wolf tail as they entered the tunnel.

.

They traveled for quite some time, well over an hour, before they finally reached their destination. Home to the badger/moles was in an even larger cavern and was a large nest built from tree branches and lined with a thick layer of fur that the two animals had shed over the years. The two humans found it soft and warm.

Nestled between the great beasts they ate the cold dinner Sokka had bought at the last inn they had visited. They did not bother to dig out their blanket or ground cloth; they weren't needed with the soft fur and warmth of the badger/moles. Sokka and Toph didn't even bother to undress. They simply snuggled together surrounded by two of the most dangerous creatures in the world, secure and warm.

Toph snuggled closer to Sokka's chest as she started to drift off to sleep. Tomorrow she would have to go to the estate and meet her parents. But tonight, as she lay here with her best friend, _her boyfriend_, the thought made her smile. And Shuffles and Snuffles who had taught her how to bend the earth and _see_ the world in their own way, she finally felt that she was home.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Well Toph finally gets home. This is a short chapter, only about five thousand words, but I did not want to mix in the next chapter where Toph meets her parents with this one. They didn't seem to fit together. Also I wanted to get a second chapter out for Tokka Month over on Tumblr.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Hey for once I don't feel I have to apologize for taking so long to update.

Thanks so much for reading.

X

Fanart; There is fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

* * *

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

For the last two chapters I have not responded to Guest reviews which I normally do, and I apologize for not doing so. I was just so anxious to get the chapters out that I didn't want to take the time since there were so many.

I would just like to say thank you to all who have left their support and criticism of my story. I really appreciate it.

To Concerned; I will give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are writing from a real concern you have for the readers, though the words you used were very insulting and hurtful, and if you want to get a writers attention that is fine, you certainly got mine, but if you want to get their cooperation you might think of a better approach in the future.

As to your concerns all I have to say is that I really think you missed the point not only of chapter 50, which you reviewed, but of the entire story and the arcs of the two characters in the story. If you want you can go to the author's notes to chapter 37 and see an explanation of what I am trying to do with the story and the characters.

Finally I would add that this story is rated M for a reason, to restrict it to those sixteen years of age and older.

* * *

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	52. Chapter 52

I'll Walk You Home pt. 52

Chapter 18

pt. 1A

Parents

XXX

"We're here!" Toph said, a little sadness coloring the tone of her voice, where she sat in front of Sokka on Shuffles' neck.

It had taken the Badger/Moles about an hour, as best as Sokka could determine, to arrive at this destination.

The tribesman, from the empty feeling in his stomach, estimated that it was sometime around noon.

.

They, Sokka and Toph, had awoken that morning, at least he assumed it was morning, in the giant nest, as the beasts had begun to wake and move about.

The two humans had eaten what was left of their food, and then the two of them had been nudged out of the nest by two giant noses. Toph had told him,

"They want to play."

Play meant that Sokka sat on the cold stone floor of the assumed cavern and had listened to the screams of delight and the laughter of his friend, while the earth shook under him. He had thought about pulling some sticks from the nest and making a fire, just for the light, but decided that being underground the light would be minimal and the smoke would be a real problem. So he had just sat there in the dark and listened.

The young man was feeling rather left out and bored by the game and was thinking about taking a nap when he felt himself being launched into the air by an earth pillar.

It was terrifying. To be completely blind and flying through the air was the most frightening experience of his life. He screamed. He didn't hold anything back. He screamed.

His inner ear told him as he passed through the apex of the arc. He was falling now and the hard stone of the floor of the cavern would be greeting him soon. He pulled his arms around his head and curled his legs up assuming a fetal position, in the hopes of limiting the damage he would suffer on the landing.

When he finally hit it wasn't a hard landing. The stone under him did not act as stone but more like the skin of a drum head. Giving beneath him and absorbing the shock. It rebounded, and then oscillated a few times till he was lying on hard stone again.

The experience reminded him of a game the tribe used to play when he was a little boy. The villagers would take a large skin, usually a Snow Bear's skin since it was so big, and each member of the tribe would hold the edge while someone jumped into the center. Then the people would pull the skin taught and launch the person in the middle up into the air, catching them in the skin when they came down.

Sokka loved that game, but that had been back home, in the daylight, here in the darkness with only stone to land on, the game was not as much fun.

As he lay there he heard Toph screaming and laughing with joy somewhere above and to his left. The sound was getting closer, fast. He rolled onto his back and held his arms out to catch her, when she fell out of the nothingness onto his chest, which he caused him to respond with a loud,

"OoooFFF!"

"Are you ok?" She asked breathlessly lying on top of him. "You sounded scared."

"Scared is an entirely inadequate word to describe what I was feeling." He told her in a strangled voice as he wrapped his arms around her and hugged her very hard. "A little warning would have been nice."

Toph threw her arms around his neck and hugged him back.

"Snuffles really liked the noise you made." She laughed against his neck.

"Glad I'm appreciated." He told her easing his grip slightly.

"They think you're really fun." She reassured him smiling.

Sokka felt the stone beneath him begin to soften and could sense that he was beginning to descend.

"Warning." Toph laughed.

"Thanks." Sokka replied.

The floor rebounded and the two were launched into the air. Toph wrapped her legs around Sokka's waist as he hugged her tighter. It wasn't as scary this time. Having Toph with him made all the difference. He knew that she would always protect him. So instead of a scream of terror he gave his high pitched war cry as they sailed through the air. Toph's laugh and scream of delight adding a counter point to his own cry.

After landing they were launched again. Sokka wasn't sure if they were the ball in a game of catch or of keep away, but he suspected that the Badger/Moles just enjoyed the screaming.

When they landed, Toph jumped up, out of his arms, and he felt a strong thrum through the earth. Above him, traveling from his left to his right he heard a surprised grunt, and then, somewhere around the middle, a loud sneeze. Nearby he heard Toph's maniacal laugh.

He felt the earth begin to fall away beneath him. He braced himself for the launch into the darkness.

"Oh yeah!" Toph shouted as she landed on Sokka's chest.

The earth rebounded and the two were flying again. The tribesman giving his war cry, it helped to relieve the terror churning his stomach. Toph added her own scream of delight.

Upon landing Toph broke away again, the earth shifted under him and he was flying again through the darkness. Without the blind bender in his arms it was much more frightening but he gave his war cry to relieve the fear, trusting that his girlfriend would save him. Just below him he heard the happy growls of the two badger/moles as they flew beneath him, all three of them reaching the apex at the same time.

Landing was again on rebounding stone, and before he could catch his breath he was launched again, his yipping cry echoing off the cavern walls and ceiling which he seemed to be skimming. Added to the happy grunts of the badger/moles beneath him was Toph's insane laughter coming straight for him. At the apex of the flight he felt a strong punch on his arm as the young woman passed him.

_Ok!_ The young man thought.

He flipped himself in the air, without the grace or elegance of the acrobat who had trained him, but it still worked, so he would land feet first this time. He wasn't sure where the floor of the cavern was but extended his toes to feel for it and once in contact contracted his knees and legs absorbing the landing and on the rebound launched himself to have more control over his flight this time.

Giving his high pitched yipping war cry he listened for the grunts of the badger/moles, and more importantly, for the happy scream of the blind earthbender as she approached him in midair. He could hear her coming at him fast; he rolled onto his side facing where she would pass him at the apex of their flight, his right hand raised. Her punch would be his signal. He just hoped that she would be face down as she went by, or this could be really embarrassing.

He felt the punch land on his chest and he brought his hand down hard and fast. His palm met firm round cloth covered flesh, with a satisfying smack, and an even more satisfying squawk of surprise from the young woman.

He spun himself in the air again to land feet first, a large smile on his face, and triumph in his war cry.

This time instead of landing on a snow bear's skin, it was more like landing in the swamp. The ground instead of giving way just swallowed him up to his neck and then froze into sold stone again. He was completely trapped.

It wasn't long before he heard the flapping of cloth coming at him out of the air. Then the ground sank and rebounded around him, though the area he was in did not soften in the least, he was still trapped.

He heard bare feet approach, then a shifting, and then he felt and heard someone just in front of his face as their breathing slowed from obvious exertion.

"Very funny." Toph said lying down with her face only a finger's width away from the tribesman's.

"Toph, have I ever told you what an amazing bender you are?" Sokka asked.

"Not often enough!" She replied, a touch of anger evident in her voice.

He felt her finger touch his forehead and begin to trace its way down to his eyebrow.

"You slapped me on the butt!" She accused him.

"Toph have I ever told you that you have the greatest butt that will ever be?" He asked.

"Greatest?!" Toph angrily retorted.

"Nicest?!" He replied with fear evident in his voice.

"As in the most wonderful, amazing, fabulous, beautiful." He continued nervously. "Toph you are beautiful and perfect in every way, which is why I love you so much."

A second finger joined the first on his forehead. The two hands began to trace the line of his eyes, down to his high cheek bones, then joining on his strong nose down to the slight stubble on his upper lip, around his mouth and down to the stiff hairs on his chin.

"Well I have to admit I have one perfect thing." She told him, her hands moving up to capture his face.

"Everything about you is perfect." He told her with feeling.

"The one thing I know…" She told him shifting forward a little. "…Is that I have the perfect boyfriend."

Her lips where on his, and he kissed back with all his admiration, and love, and passion for the most beautiful, the most amazing woman that would ever be.

Sokka was frustrated. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her, touch her, crush her to him, but he was trapped so he tried to put all his love and desire into the kiss. Toph responded with her own love and need, and the kiss went on, and on.

.

There was a danger that the two of them might have died that way, due to lack of air, then water, and eventually food, had not a large wet nose nudged the two heads.

"Yeah…" Toph sighed, breaking the kiss. "We should probably be going."

The blind girl stood up and walked with Shuffles back towards the nest, where Snuffles was waiting for them. They had only gone a few steps when a plaintive,

"A little help here."

Was heard behind them.

Sokka heard a bare foot slap against stone and he popped up and out of the floor onto his feet again.

"Thanks." He said, holding onto Shuffles tail to find his way to the nest.

.

The two strapped on their packs and duffels and Toph bent them both up onto Shuffles' neck, she sitting in front of her boyfriend. Sokka wrapped his long arms around the small woman, and kissed her neck under her ear.

"Toph, I love you." He whispered to her.

Being in the dark last night and this morning had given him new respect for and one more reason to love this amazing girl.

She turned her face to his and found his lips, giving him a long, loving kiss in reply. She could not believe that this amazing and wonderful man could love her.

Shuffles grunted and the two humans broke their kiss and grabbed onto the beast's fur, as she carried them into the darkness.

.

The giant beast lowered her head and the two slid down, out onto her nose, where she flipped them up and off. Toph gave a happy laugh and Sokka gave a high pitched war cry as he flew blindly through the dark.

"Good bye Shuffles." Toph said, tears evident in her voice, as she embraced the nose of the animal. "We'll be back soon."

The young tribesman rose painfully to his feet and felt for the badger/mole, shuffling towards the sound of Toph's voice. When his outstretched hand met with the furry muzzle, he positioned himself and licked the nose of the giant. He received a loving wet lick in return.

"Thanks for all the rides and everything, Shuffles." He told the animal.

"Bye Snuffles." Toph said from somewhere behind Sokka. "We'll be bending again sometime soon."

The tribesman turned and felt for the other Badger/Mole and licked the male's nose. Sokka dodged to his right when he heard a snuffle from the giant beast, but was only hit with a long wet tongue in reply.

"Thanks." The teen said with feeling.

Sokka heard the shuffling of large heavily clawed feet near him and a grinding of the earth somewhere above him.

"Sokka, over here." Toph called.

The young man moved, cautiously reaching out, towards the sound of his girlfriend's voice. Her small hand grabbed his large one and pulled him to her. They stood together hugging and then were launched into the air on a pillar of earth.

The sunlight was blinding. Sokka shut his eyes against it. Toph grabbed his hand and began pulling him along.

"Come on!" She insisted in a harsh whisper. "The guards will be here in a minute to investigate the bending."

"I can't see." He explained trying to keep his feet under him as he ran behind her.

"Duck!" She commanded.

He did as he was told, raising his eyelids to just slits enabling him to see, blurred by the tears flooding his eyes, a low hole in the wall in front of them. He followed her inside. With a hand movement she closed the opening and the two were in a narrow dark corridor.

"This way." She said pulling him through a small wooden door.

They were on a narrow flight of dark stairs going up. There was a small landing and a second flight continuing up.

"Why are these stairs so narrow?" He asked trying to not trip on all his bags and weapons, as he followed her.

"They're for the servants." She explained pulling him up the stairs.

There was another door and then they were in a long wide carpeted corridor with paintings and tapestries on the walls and glow crystals in sconces. There were identical wooden doors along each wall with golden handles and hinges. Beneath the carpet he could feel that the floor was hard stone, or bent earth.

Toph dragged him down the hall to the last door on the right, opened it and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind them. He heard her give a sigh of relief as she leaned against the door.

"So… This is your room?" Sokka asked.

The room was spare. Deeper, maybe ten long strides, than it was wide. The door they had come in was in the center of the shorter wall. The far wall was made of three, floor to ceiling windows, heavy curtains were tied back on the sides, the center window being the widest and having a double door in the center which led to a wide balcony.

In the far end of the side walls were two wooden doors, one in the left hand wall and one in the right. The walls themselves were unadorned plaster, painted in a quiet green. Evenly spaced along the walls were golden sconces that held glow crystal lanterns.

Against the side walls were two couches, more cushioned benches really, with filigreed wooden backs. At the far end of the left couch was an embroidered sash hanging from the ceiling. Opposite on the right hand wall was a medium sized iron pagoda stove, the chimney running up into the ceiling. Near the stove was a hook, from which a long straight stick was hung by a leather thong.

The floor was covered in a heavy intricately patterned carpet, the primary color being a dark, almost black, green. Under the carpet, from what Sokka could tell the floor was solid stone, or compressed bent earth.

On either side of the door they had entered through Sokka was surprised to see two book cases. The one on the left facing into the room, contained no books, but the shelves were crowded with various vases and figures and boxes. The right hand one was full of books which immediately caught the young man's interest.

"This is the school room." Toph explained, pulling the tribesman out of his thoughts.

The way she said it obviously held no joy at her return.

"Through there…" She pointed to her left towards the far door. "…Is the bathroom, and past that is the bedroom. Over there…" She pointed to her right. "… Is the play room."

It was easy to hear the bitterness in her voice.

"Nice." Sokka said, just to acknowledge the information.

"You can dump your stuff anywhere." She told him walking into the room. "I'll be back in a minute."

With that she opened the door to the bathroom/Bedroom and went through it.

Sokka divested himself of all his bags and packs, dropping them in the corner by the knickknack bookcase. Even pulling off his coat and hat and laying them on top of everything else. He kept his weapons belt on, more out of habit than anything else.

He went to the book filled bookcase and looked at the spines. He was surprised and impressed to see that they were actual bound books for the most part not scrolls. From his own shopping experience he knew that books were far more expensive than scrolls.

He noticed that there wasn't any dust, anywhere. Everything was polished and spotless, even the stove. Someone must come in everyday and clean the room.

He began to scan the spines. The top shelf seemed to be books on etiquette and the lineage of noble families.

On the next shelf were books on grammar, simple mathematics, the language of flowers and how to arrange them, and one on the language of fans. He pulled the last one from the shelf and opened it at random. The book was heavily illustrated and described ways to use your fan, you being a young lady at a royal ball, to flirt with young men and communicate with other young women. He could see where some of the Kyoshi fighting techniques originated as he scanned the pages.

He returned the book to its spot and squatted down to read the spines on the third shelf. These seemed to be literature. Romances for the most part. But one book caught his eye. "Tales for Young and Old". He pulled the book out and scanned the contents page. The volume was broken down into parts.

Part one was "Fun Tales". One of the stories was "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig", which sounded very interesting to the hungry young man.

Part two was "Tales of Romance and Love". He saw "The Cave of Two Lovers", among many other stories listed.

Part three was "Tales of adventure". The stories seemed to be about earthbenders and their amazing feats, including one on Avatar Kyoshi.

The fourth part was called, "Dark Tales". This section seemed to be mostly ghost stories, and stories about the spirits. One story called "The Boy Who Drew Cats" intrigued the artist in the tribesman. Then there were stories of "Kho the Face Stealer".

The last part was just called "Prophecies". The last tale was called "The Dark Twins of Tui and La and the End of the World". He was just flipping to the story when he heard the door behind him open. He put the book back, straightened up and turned to see Toph reenter the room.

"Everything ok?" He asked her.

"Yeah…" She answered unhappily.

She stood by the table for a moment, thinking.

"Might as well get this over with." She said making a decision, she walked to the sash and pulled it down then released it.

"What's that?" Sokka asked walking over to her.

"It's a thing you pull for a servant." She told him.

He examined the sash, seeing that it was attached at the top to a small chain that disappeared up through a hole in the ceiling. He reached out to pull it, but Toph slapped his hand away.

"Don't touch it!" She ordered. "You only have to pull it once."

"I just wanted to see how it works." He answered defensively, while rubbing his stinging hand.

"If you pull it more than once they think you're a little child playing with it and someone will be punished." She explained testily.

"Sorry." He told her. "Just curious."

Sokka sat on the end of the couch/bench staring up at the chain and the hole in the ceiling wondering what happened up there, using all his willpower to restrain himself from pulling on the sash again.

Toph paced the room.

_There must be a crawl space up there._ The tribesman thought staring at the grommeted hole in the ceiling.

He pulled up the image of the main building from his first visit. It was two stories with a peaked roof, which meant that there was plenty of room above them. There was probably a ladder or something to get up there, just for maintenance of the system, that he could use to examine exactly how it worked.

He was still thinking of how he could get up there when he heard the door from the main hallway open. He looked to see a young woman a few years older than himself standing in the open door looking back at him. She seemed surprised to see anyone in the room, let alone a heavily armed, travel stained, water tribesman.

Sokka shot to his feet, to be polite. The servant took a step back at the movement. Her long green silken robe whispering as she moved. Sokka noticed a winged boar embroidered over her left shoulder.

"Who are you?! The woman demanded. "And what are you doing in Mistress Toph's room?!"

"He is my guest!" Toph told her in a harsh voice.

"Mistress!" The woman exclaimed after a second's pause, as she looked at the young earthbender.

The servant bowed low to Toph, which the blind woman acknowledged with a slight nod of her head. Sokka bowed in answer.

"Please inform my parents that I have returned." Toph commanded. "And convey my request for an audience with them at their earliest convenience."

"Yes Mistress." The servant said, never rising from her bow.

Still in the low bow the woman backed out of the room and closed the door.

"Well now the fun will really start." Toph said with a sigh.

The blind twelve year old began to pace the room again. The tribesman sat again on the couch watching her.

"Any chance that next time we could get some food?" Sokka asked in a quiet voice.

That got a laugh from Toph, and she walked over, jumped into his lap and hugged him.

"Sure!" She told him. "Next time we'll ask for some food."

"Thanks!" He told her, then he pulled her close and kissed her.

She kissed back, letting her fear flow out of her.

"I love you." She told him.

"I love you." He answered, giving her another kiss.

She replied in kind, settling into him.

.

The woman rushed down the hallway as quickly as she could without appearing too indecorous. She was in her mid thirties, with her long black hair bound up in a tight bun at the back of her head. Two long silver pins were driven into the bun to hold it in place. Her long silk robe was split down the sides revealing her long dark green silk pants and embroidered green slippers. Her face gave no sign of her agitation, being a mask of disapproval.

Behind her chased a thirteen year old girl. Her long black hair braided into a very tight cue down her back. She was dressed in a dark green jacket that ended just below her waist, that was embroidered with the winged boar on the left breast. Her black loose silk pants ending just above her simple black slippers.

The woman stopped at the door to the class room and prepared herself. Her beautiful, delicate little flower had returned. She banished the happy little smile that had begun to creep onto her face. Although she was ecstatic, it would not do for anyone to see such a breach of etiquette.

She settled her face into the, what she felt, was a neutral expression, but to any other observer was her permanent scowl. She checked on the girl behind and to her right. The girl took a half step back expecting a blow, and trying not to grimace. But she had passed inspection, apparently, since she was not struck.

The woman grabbed the door handle with authority and pushed the door open.

"Mistress..." The woman said, as she bowed her way into the room, but then, as she straightened, she saw her refined little charge, straddling some dark skinned, obviously foreign, road stained, peasant, or worse yet some minor soldier, or Oma forbid, a mercenary Water Tribesman, and kissing him.

At the woman's voice Toph jumped off of Sokka and landed on her feet, by the table, her hands folded delicately in front of her. Sokka shot to his feet, startled by the voice and the sudden movement of his girlfriend.

"What is That?!" The woman demanded pointing to the young man. "And what is it doing in your room?!

Toph said nothing, hanging her head and _staring_ at the carpet.

"My name is Sokka." The tribesman said with a small polite bow.

"No One is talking to You!" The woman said in a seething voice, dismissing him.

The dark skinned teen was taken aback for a second by the abruptness of this strange woman. He did not remember her from his previous visit to the estate.

"Madame Wang." Toph said in a quiet voice, her head still down, as she bowed to the woman.

_Oh ho!_ Sokka thought. _So this is the famous Madame Wang._

This new knowledge made his decision for him.

"But I am talking to you!" The tribesman said with authority.

This was not the sheltered teen of a year ago speaking. This was the leader of Team Avatar. A warrior who had led an invasion, and destroyed an air fleet, who had fought and killed many times his number in battle.

"I am a guest of your mistress, and you will treat me with the respect you owe to her." He told the woman, shifting his weight onto his right leg and resting his left hand on the grip of his sword.

"How dare you?!" The servant spat out at him.

"You!" Sokka spat back silencing her. "Do not want to know what I will dare, but if you don't return your mistress's bow and my own you are going to find out."

With this last the tribesman rose to his full height, almost a head taller than the older woman.

"He is my guest." Toph's quiet voice entered the silence in the room.

"Forgive me mistress." The woman said bowing low, to the small bender. "But you are not allowed visitors in your rooms. It is a house rule."

"Girl!" Madam Wang turned to the girl she had entered with. "Fetch the stick."

"Yes Madam." The girl bowed and stepping to the wall pulled the rattan cane off of the wall and handed it to the woman, with a second bow.

"The rules are for all of us, Mistress." The servant proclaimed with a small bow to the blind girl. "And there are consequences for all who don't obey them."

"Girl! Drop you trousers!" Madame Wang ordered her companion.

The thirteen year old girl reached for the waist band of her pants, then with a look of embarrassed horror, realized that there was a man in the room, not just any man but from his look and clothes he could possibly be a Water Tribe Barbarian, and the idea of exposing herself to him froze her in terror. _What if he can't control himself?!_ She wondered to herself.

"Hurry girl!" The woman commanded.

Toph stiffened in fear. She wanted to cover her ears to block out the sounds she knew would soon be filling the room.

Poor Girl began to undress, fear of Madam Wang overcoming her fear of the barbarian.

Sokka saw his friend's reaction and acted.

"Don't!" He commanded the girl.

"You don't give orders here!" Madame Wang nearly screamed, raising the cane over her head.

As she slashed the cane at the young man's face, she saw him move, and before she could react, the cane was twisting out of her hand and flying up into the air. There was a flash of steel as the teen drew his sword and she heard two distinct "tings" as it moved through the air. She stepped back in surprise and just noticed the young man re-sheathing his sword as the cane, now in three pieces, landed on the carpet.

"Madam Wang!" Toph's clear strong voice cut across the sound of steel being slid into its scabbard. "You seem to forget who does give the orders here."

With quick deliberate steps the earthbender crossed to the older woman, and lifting her head to "look" into the face of the taller woman, said,

"I am the mistress here, not you. This man is my guest and as such you will treat him with the same respect you would have towards me, or my father will hear of it."

"Yes, mistress." Madam Wang was finally able to choke out, with a small bow.

There was a light click as the door opened and the young woman from earlier stepped in bowing.

"Mistress Toph." The young woman said from her bow. "Your parents will see you now."

"Come on Sokka, we better be going." Toph said heading for the door.

"Just a second." The tribesman said moving to his gear and pulling on his coat and packs.

"You can leave all that here." She told him.

"Toph." He whispered back to her. "I have a feeling I won't be returning to this room anytime soon."

"Your probably right." She sadly agreed in an under tone.

Once he was packed up, the two of them joined the young woman as she led them down the hall. Madam Wang and Poor Girl followed at a respectful distance.

XXX

To be continued:

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**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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Author's notes:

Hi All,

Yes very late once again. I am very sorry but this chapter is being a real bear (I know I always say that, but it really is). It has been such a bear that I still haven't finished it yet and I'm at 11,500 words, so I have decided to split it into two parts. This is the first part and I hope to finish the second this weekend.

Thanks so much for reading.

***New FanART;**** Sicksketch has done some wonderful sketches over on Tumblr. Please take a look there is one of Su-Kami and a preliminary of Toph in her dance costume. You can find them by searching the "ill walk you home" tag. Please take a look.

X

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

I'd like to thank all the guest reviewers for their criticism and support. I really am trying to get better at this and need all the help I can get.

X

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	53. Chapter 53

I'll Walk You Home pt. 53

Chapter 18

pt. 2

Parents

* * *

"Why didn't you just break her stick?" Toph asked in a whisper, as they walked behind the servant down the long hall.

"It was rattan." The tribesman answered just as quietly. "I don't think I could have broken it. Besides I thought the use of the sword was nicely dramatic."

"I like dramatic." Toph whispered back with a smile.

She reached out and took his hand and gave it a squeeze to emphasize her words.

Sokka smiled back at her, as the two walked on holding hands.

They were led down a wide set of carpeted stairs across a grand foyer, down another hall which ended in a wide set of tall double doors. Sokka noted the two armed guards on either side of the doors. They were dressed in what looked like Earth Army armor, but the chest plate had a winged boar emblazoned on it instead of the Earth Kingdom coin. Both men had broad bladed curved swords in scabbards hanging from their belts, and both men were bare foot.

In front of the doors was an older man with a long tight que, his black hair shot with small streaks of grey. He was a slight man in an oversized long green robe with a small but highly embroidered winged boar on the left breast.

The young woman who had led them up to this point bowed low to the older man, who answered with a small nod, and then she stepped aside.

"Mistress Toph." The man said bowing low to the small bender. "My heart sings with joy at your return."

"Thank you Hong." Toph replied with a slight bow. "This is my…"

She thought for a moment but then went on.

"This is my friend and companion, Sokka."

"I am Hong, butler to his grace, Grand Duke Bei Fong." The man said bowing to the tribesman.

The bow was about half way between the nod he had given the servant and the deep bow he had given Toph. Sokka bowed in return, giving the butler a bow about half way between the slight bow of Toph and the bow the man had given the tribesman.

As Hong straightened up he gave the warrior an appraising look for a second then turned to Toph.

"Is this how you wish to be presented, Mistress?" He asked Toph.

Sokka knew that they must look rather disreputable, travel stained as they were, and he with his long coat, packs and bags, and his weapons. The two guards had been giving him the stink eye as soon as they had seen him coming down the hall.

"We're fine." Toph replied, letting a little irritation enter her voice.

"Very good Mistress." Hong replied, though it seemed to Sokka that the butler did not think they were at all 'fine'.

"Please follow me." The older man requested with a bow.

Hong turned and gave a slight nod to the closed doors, which opened at the unspoken command. Sokka loved it. He had to know how the butler did that.

The young couple followed the older man into the next room, Madame Wang and Poor Girl in their wake. Sokka took a quick look and saw that two male servants had opened the doors. They were in the long robes of the other servants, but he noted that they were barefoot, not wearing the black slippers the other servants had on.

_Probably benders._ He thought to himself. _They double as guards._

He figured there was a peep hole in at least one of the doors. That's how they knew to open them on cue.

It was not a large room. As he looked around he recognized it as the room where he had met Toph's parents on his first visit with Aang and his sister nearly a year before. Hong bowed low to Lao and Poppy who were seated on two low chairs on a small dais against the far wall.

Lao seemed nervous and impatient, fidgeting with the arms of his chair, and looking like he would jump out of it at any second, his face moving from silly smile to impatient frown and back again. Poppy sat sternly upright and unmoving, her mouth a thin line across the lower portion of her face.

"Your graces, I have the honor to present to you your daughter, Toph…"

"Yes! Yes!" Lao interrupted the servant in an irritated voice, waving his hand in dismissal. "We know our own daughter!"

The butler bowed at the reprimand and moved aside taking his place by the Grand Duke's right hand.

"Toph! We, your mother and I, are so happy you decided to return home." Lao went on, almost leaving his throne in his unfeigned happiness. "When we got your letter saying you were on your way and when to expect you, I couldn't believe it at first."

"Letter?!" Toph asked in a surprised, and truth be told irritated voice, her face was turned to Sokka when she said it.

"Yes!" Lao went on. "Though I have to say that the scribe you used during the war had a much better hand than the one you are using now. This new one's calligraphy is so bad that we had a hard time deciphering some of the characters."

"Yes so I've heard." Toph replied, still facing her companion. "But he was handy, and one must use the tools that one is given."

"So true." Lao agreed. "But even your mother has to admit that your new scribe can spin a tale."

He reached over and took his wife's hand at this.

"The long addition this new scribe included with your letter..." Lao continued addressing Toph again. "... telling of all your adventures and escapes during the war read like one of those romance novels your mother is so fond of."

"Oh really?!" The blind girl remarked, turning back towards her parents.

"Oh yes dear!" Poppy answered her daughter, the thin line of her mouth opening slightly to reveal a glimpse of white teeth. "Just like an adventure written by Lee Loo Ling, though not as well written as her works are."

"But still..." the Grand Duke amended."... no matter how badly written, the rescuing of his majesty from the fall of Ba Sing Se, the sneaking around the fire nation, the training of the Avatar, the invasion of the Fire Nation, and finally the saving of the entire kingdom. It made you sound like a hero of old!"

"I'll have to thank him the next time I get a chance." Toph commented punching Sokka in the arm.

"What?!" The tribesman asked rubbing the spot. "I wrote a couple of letters."

"A couple?!" The small bender asked.

"Yes." The Grand Duke affirmed. "We were a little afraid you would not be here in time for your party, but then your letter arrived and then the second one, and here you are a day early. Your mother is so pleased. She's spent so much time and effort getting everything ready for you birthday."

"Birthday?" Sokka asked turning towards his companion.

"What?" Toph answered, now finding herself on the defensive.

"Who is that man?" Lao asked the butler, then turning to his daughter, he continued. "Hong said he was a jester or a fool or something, but he looks more like a porter with all those bags, or perhaps he's your body guard with all those weapons."

"He's not my boyfriend!" Toph blurted out.

Sokka sagged at the statement, and not from the weight of all the books and gear he was wearing. He realized that Toph had not meant to hurt him, but it hurt all the same. He knew she had her reasons, parents after all were parents, and she already had problems with hers, but it still hurt. He was a non-bending water tribe barbarian. No great Earth Kingdom high noble family would want their daughter associated with someone like him.

"I mean porter!" Toph continued, flustered now, desperate to fix the error she had made.

"Sokka is my friend!" She told her father and mother.

She couldn't bring herself to state the reality that he was the only man she did, or could ever love. That just took too much courage. Her parents did not understand her, did not love her, but she still needed their approval and acceptance.

"He's my best friend!" She told them. "My… best friend in the whole world."

Toph reached out and took Sokka's hand, and squeezed it.

_Ah fuck it!_ She thought.

"Sokka's my boy…" Toph began but was cut off by Sokka.

"Bodyguard at first, but we soon realized, after she saved my life a bunch of times, that she didn't need any protection." The tribesman explained, squeezing Toph's hand. "So I just sort of followed her around helping where I could during the war. We were a kind of a team. She'd save my life, and I'd look stupid. It gave her something to do."

"You're not stupid!" Toph proclaimed, pulling his hand for emphasis, nearly over balancing him off his feet with all that he was carrying.

"We're friends!" She told her father.

"Best friends!" She told her mother, then she continued to the both of them. "Sokka's saved my life more times than I can count. I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for Sokka. He's saved me from monsters and sand pirates, and bandits, and that's just on this trip. During the war it was Aang and Katara, and Sokka and me, and we've been together ever since. Even after the war. We're a couple."

This last got a reaction from both her parents. Lao seemed surprised and interested. Poppy's thin lips became thinner and her eyes became hard little emeralds burning into the young man.

"She means team." Sokka explained.

The young man's attention was drawn to the butler, which distracted him before he could say anything else. Hong was bearing his teeth at the tribesman while motioning with his hand as if to say he should continue.

Toph took advantage of the silence.

"No! We're a couple!" She told her parents. "Like Aang and Katara."

_Why is he growling at me?_ Sokka wondered, staring at the butler.

"Sokka's… my boyfriend!" Toph proclaimed. "And I'm his girlfriend and we love each other!"

"Your Grace!" Sokka suddenly shouted, finally understanding what Hong was trying to tell him. "I mean your Graces!... What?"

This last was aimed at Toph, he had missed the conversation up to that point because of the butler.

"You're my boyfriend!" The blind girl said, tugging painfully at his hand in frustration.

"Oh that. Yeah! Of course" Sokka agreed in an offhand manner as if the answer were obvious.

"Kiss." He warned in a quiet voice as he leaned down and touched his lips to hers.

It wasn't much of a kiss more of small peck really, since the young man was distracted. His eye was caught by the strange growling expression on the butler's face, along with the odd hand gestures the man was making.

Sokka straightened up swiftly and with a small bow said.

"Your Grace…esss." The last part an afterthought.

Toph had accepted the little kiss, with a small smile gracing her lips. Then she stepped in and wrapped her left arm around the boys left, squeezing his hand at the same time, and letting her face lean against his strong shoulder. A strangled sound in front of her brought back the fact that she was standing before her parents. She decided to have some fun and just snuggled up to her boyfriend even more.

The sound had come from the Grand Duke. At first his expression had been one of surprise, well shock actually, but his training had not allowed him to express that much emotion. The sound came as he felt the bones in his hand start to grind together. That's when the fear, but mostly pain, had entered his expression and the little sound had escaped his lips. That's also when he realized that he was still holding hands with his wife.

The Grand Duchess was staring at Sokka. The thin line of her mouth was hardly visible at all now. The thought flashed through the tribesman's mind that Poppy might have some fire bender blood in her family, since her face was bright red, and there seemed to be a fierce light emanating from her jade eyes. He could almost swear that the woman's hair was standing up and was about to burst into flame. There was no doubt that the look she was giving him was causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise, and he began to surreptitiously look for a quick exit from the room.

"Sokka?!" Burst from Lao's mouth, as he, with some difficulty, pulled his hand free of his wife's grip. "I've heard that name before."

"Boyyyyyyyyyyfriennnnnnnd?" The word was almost a growl emanating from the Grand Duchess.

Toph just gripped Sokka's arm more tightly to herself, and gave a wider smile, now aimed at her mother.

"Not here, dear." The Grand Duke quietly warned his wife.

Lao reached out to pat her hand reassuringly, but thought better of it, seeing her white fingers and knuckles on the arm of her throne. He pulled his hand back and began to massage it to reduce the swelling.

"Yes your grace." Hong filled the silence. "He is the young man who visited some months ago with the Avatar's party. As you may recall he was quite amusing then, which led to my unfortunate misunderstanding as to his position in the Avatar's court earlier."

Lao leaned forward in his chair staring at Sokka.

"Really?!" He asked the butler. "He doesn't look anything like I remember that young man. Well maybe a little."

"Oh yes your grace." Hong replied. "Also there is all the correspondence we have received addressed to him. You probably remember the name from that as well."

"Correspondence?" Lao asked the servant, then remembering he went on. "Oh yes of course all those letters we've been getting, from all over the world."

"Letters?" Sokka asked, with a little happy note to his voice.

"Your Grace?" He added after a look from the butler.

"Yes." The Grand Duke said. "There must be…"

Lao looked to Hong.

"More than a dozen, your grace." The servant filled in. "Some from the ruling council, some from the Avatar, and even two from the Fire Lord. They are all in the library."

"Library?" Sokka squeaked, holding in his wonder and joy. "Your Grace."

"Yes." Lao drawled. "I have my own library."

The Grand Duke said this with evident pride, enjoying the reaction of the young man. He was not disappointed.

"Well, perhaps it would be best if I take this young man to the library where we can get acquainted, and you can have a little talk with our daughter."

Lao directed this last to his wife, who nodded in reply.

"Yes we have a lot to discuss." Poppy told Toph.

"Yes, mother." Toph said reluctantly releasing her hold on Sokka's arm.

"Hong, Please have a guest room made up for this young man." The Grand Duke told his butler. "I assume you will be staying for the party?"

"I don't wish to impose on your hospitality, but yes please if I could stay till I have to leave in about ten days, I would really appreciate it, your grace." Sokka answered.

"Your grace..." The servant explained to his lord. "...that might be a problem with all the guests expected for the party many will be staying in Gaoling but the close friends and family will be staying on the estate."

"It won't be a problem." Toph spoke up. "I'll bend Sokka a guest house in the garden behind my room."

"In the garden?!" Poppy objected.

"Don't worry mother." The blind girl reassured her. "I'll make sure it's nice and pretty."

"Excellent!" Lao proclaimed before any more objections could be raised.

"Well, young man..." The Grand Duke said rising from his chair, and in a grand manner, pointing to the door proclaimed, "... to the library."

"And you, young lady, come with me." Poppy commanded as she rose from her chair, gesturing to Toph.

.

The walk to the Grand Duchess' private apartments was long and silent. As they arrived Madame Wang hurried forward and opened the door for the mother and daughter, but when she began to follow them into the room, the servant was stopped by the Duchess

"Have tea brought up for us with some sweets." Poppy told the governess. "You will not be needed, I will speak with my daughter privately. You may wait for her here. "

With that the Duchess closed the door in the servant's face.

"Her daughter!" Madame Wang said in fierce whisper to herself. "I'm the one who fed her from my own breast, raised her, trained her. I spend more time in one day with her than she does in a whole month. 'My daughter' indeed. Toph is my child, my beautiful perfect little child, not yours."

Poor girl just stood near the wall and waited patiently for new instructions.

"Girl!" The elder servant said, snapping her fingers. "You heard the duchess, bring up some tea and sweets."

Poor girl bowed and hurried down to the kitchen.

.

Because of all his bags, duffels, and packs, Sokka had to ease himself sideways through the door into the library. It had been a long walk down the corridor of the eastern wing of the great house to get here, and the young man was tired, and very hungry, but all that was forgotten when he finally saw where he was.

It was a beautiful room. One of the most beautiful the tribesman had ever seen. It was large, twice as tall as he was. The eastern wall was floor to ceiling windows, with double doors in the bases that led out to a railed patio. The other three walls were floor to ceiling book cases, full of books and scrolls, thousands of them.

Sokka had been in libraries before and this was not the largest, but it was the most elegant. The smell of wood, and ink, and paper filled the room. It was the smell of information and knowledge.

The bookcases were made of dark wood, not bent earth. Ladders with wide treads, running on rails were attached to the three bookcases, so you could get to the higher tiers. There was a long heavy wooden table in the center, two chairs to each side and one each at the head and the foot. On the table, were glow crystal holders running down the center. There was a pile of scrolls near the far end.

Near the southern wall was a large desk, with two chairs in front of it, and a large chair on the other side for whoever was using it. The surface of the desk was very ordered, with a large stone seal and writing brush with ink stand in the center. There was even a small bookcase alongside of the desk.

The young man might never have moved from that spot if not for the scream of a bird of prey.

Sokka turned toward the sound and saw a fierce creature flying straight for him. He raised his right arm and the animal landed on his forearm. He could feel the strong talons through the sheaths of his throwing knives strapped to his arms.

"Oh yes, I should have warned you about that bird." The Grand Duke said in embarrassment. "It really has a mind of its own, and we can't do a thing with it."

"Hawky!" Sokka exclaimed, stroking the bird's head.

The bird squawked in answer.

"That might explain it, your grace." Hong confided to his master. "If this is indeed the young man's animal. It might explain why the creature refused to carry any messages for us, and why it has been so protective of the mail we have received for him."

With this last the butler indicated the young tribesman, who was searching in one of his shoulder bags.

"Sorry guy." Sokka told the bird, stroking its head. "I'm all out of anything to eat."

The bird gave a little cry and launched itself from his arm to a stand topped by a perch with two bowls attached to it set up by the center window.

"This was the bird that brought the letter from Mistress Toph during the war, your grace." Hong went on with his explanation.

"Of course." Lao agreed, and then explained to his guest. "I had him brought in here, since he would not leave any mail addressed to you, which was causing problems in the eerie."

"I'm sorry to have caused any difficulty for you, and your people, your grace." Sokka apologized. "Hawky is a little aggressive, and a very loyal friend."

As if to prove the young man's statement, the bird launched itself from its perch and landed on the teens shoulder. Hanging from its curved beak was a small strip of raw meat it had pulled from its food bowl. It offered the meat to Sokka, who accepted it directly into his mouth and began to chew it.

"Awww, thanks Hawky!" The boy told the bird as he chewed. "You're the best!"

The hawk puffed out its breast and lifted its wings at the compliment.

Sokka did not see it, but Hong gave a slightly sickened look at the display, while Lao seemed more surprised and fascinated by it.

"Forgive me." The Grand Duke said with a little bow to the young man. "I have been remiss as a host, after your long travels you must be tired and hungry. Hong have a cold lunch brought up from the kitchen and since it is such a fine day have it served on the patio."

"Of course, your grace, right away." The butler replied with a deep bow.

"Thank you your grace." Sokka replied, adding his own deep bow to the Grand Duke. "That would be wonderful, but not as wonderful as your magnificent library, or your kindness to a strange bird who happened to enter your home."

Lao bowed in return and smiled at the compliment. _That was nicely done._ The Grand Duke thought.

"Your mail is there on the table." Lao said pointing to the pile of scrolls. "Please feel free to use this room as yours while you are with us."

Thank you again, your grace." The young man said with a bow.

Lao could not be sure, but it almost seemed as if the hawk had bowed as well, though it was probably just that the bird was on the boy's shoulder that made it seem as if it had.

"You can leave your things over there by Hawky's perch." The Grand Duke said the name with a little questioning tone to his voice which received a smile from Sokka as a reply. "At least until you are settled in a room."

"Thank you again your grace." Sokka said with a bow.

The tribesman moved to the stand and began to divest himself of all his bags and packs. The bird flew from his shoulder and took up residence on its perch.

"Hong!" Lao called, catching the butler before he could exit the room.

The lord and the servant conferred quietly for a few seconds and then the butler left. Lao turned back to see the young man unbuckling his weapons belt and placing it on his pack neatly laid out on the floor.

"What is in those sacks?" The Grand Duke asked. "They look very heavy."

"Oh, these your grace?" Sokka asked pulling the sacks up onto his shoulder again and walking to the table. "These are books that were given to me by a friend."

"Books?!" Lao said with a warm light behind his jade eyes.

"Yes, your grace." The young man said, hoisting the bags up onto the table.

"May I see them, please." The older man asked.

"Of course your grace." Sokka said with a bow, then he untied the tops of the bags. "It would be my honor for you to look at them."

The young man opened the sacks and began to lay the contents out on the table. The Grand Duke began a loving examination of the books.

"What language is this?" Lao asked holding up the first book.

"I'm not sure, your grace." Sokka explained, joining the Duke and looking over his shoulder. "Most of the books are in old languages that are not spoken anymore. My... friend gave me these books..." he indicated the instruction books. "... so I could learn the languages and read these other books."

"How marvelous!" Lao exclaimed. "Books on how to read books, what a wonderful idea."

The two men moved down the piles enjoying the books together.

.

Toph stood in the middle of her mother's sitting room, sending out her bending to get a feel of the place. She had been here a few times in the past, but the room was heavily carpeted and all the furniture was made of wood and heavily cushioned, so she had never been able to get a good sense of it. As she felt the vibrations return she was surprised and delighted to feel the room and everything in it in a much better sense than she ever had in the past. All that bending in the snow with her boots on had really sharpened her senses, or perhaps Sokka's unblocking of her chi was still paying dividends. The thought of that night caused her cheeks to heat, as the blood rushed into her face.

It wasn't a large room. There was a couch along the back wall with a low table in front of it. Two cushioned arm chairs faced the couch, and there was a small book case against the far wall, windows took up the wall opposite the couch. Beyond the windows was a balcony.

"Please be seated." Poppy said indicating one of the arm chairs.

Toph sat on the cushioned chair. It was too large for her, so she had to perch somewhat on the edge and stretch her toes to keep contact with the carpeted stone floor. The arms were too high for her so she folded her hands in her lap.

"Sit up straight dear; always remember that you are a lady." The Grand Duchess said as she draped herself decorously on the end of the couch across from her daughter.

"Yes mother." Toph replied straightening her back.

"Your father and I are very happy that you have finally returned to us." Poppy told her daughter. "And we are especially glad that you returned in time for your birthday. I don't think you can realize just how important this party will be for you. It will be the start of your introduction to society. Turning thirteen is just the beginning, but it will set the course you will follow for the rest of your life. Now of course this party will be a small intimate affair, only about two hundred guests, family and close friends, but I can't emphasize how important they will be to your future. These are the people that will determine your life."

"Yes mother." Toph said without enthusiasm to fill the pause.

"These next three years will be the most important of your life, dear." Her mother went on to explain. "Just think, by your sixteenth birthday the marriage contracts will be signed and you will have met the man you will marry. You will be starting your…"

"I already have." Toph interrupted in a strong voice.

"What, dear?" Poppy asked, irritated that she had been rudely interrupted, in her planned speech.

"I already have met the man I am going to marry." Toph explained.

"Yes…" The Grand Duchess said, her lips drawing into the thin line that had graced her features during the audience downstairs. "About that boy."

"Yes mother." The young woman replied.

"He's very dark, isn't he?" Her mother asked.

It took Toph a moment to figure out just what Poppy was asking, but eventually she did. The corner of the bender's mouth curved up slightly before she could control it.

"Yes…" Toph told her mother, turning her most innocent face towards Poppy. "It was the first thing I noticed about him."

"I'm just saying that he's very Water Tribe, isn't he?" The Grand Duchess asked defensively.

"Yes..." The young woman said, putting on an air of contemplation. "It makes him, brave, smart, and loyal."

"I'm sure it does." Poppy agreed, reluctantly. "But I thought he already had a girlfriend?"

Toph's heart jumped at that. She could not understand how her mother had found out about Suki. How was she going to explain about stealing another girl's boyfriend?

"Girlfriend?" Toph squeaked trying to bluff for more time.

"Yes…" Poppy continued, seeing that she had hit a nerve. "That Water Tribe girl he was here with when the Avatar visited us. The way they acted around each other anyone could see that they were a couple. What has happened to her?"

The blind girl thought for a moment, then laughed both in relief and in genuine amusement at her mother's mistake.

"That was his sister." Toph replied after her laughter had died to a chuckle. "Her name is Katara, and she and Aang are a couple now."

"His sister?" The duchess asked. "I thought they were the same age, are they twins?"

"No…" The young woman said thinking. "I don't know how far apart they are but Sokka is definitely older than Katara but not by much."

"And his name is Sakka and her name is Kitara?" Poppy asked concern entering her voice for the first time.

"Sokka and Katara." Toph corrected her.

"And they are from the Southern Water Tribe?" The duchess asked her, a touch of fear entering her tone.

"Yes." The daughter confirmed, wondering why her mother was so interested.

"Toph, this is very important. Has this Sakka…"

"His name is Sokka." Toph corrected her again.

"Alright, Sokka." Poppy said in annoyance, she then leaned forward and earnestly continued. "Has this Sokka ever kissed you?"

"Yes mother." Toph replied, letting some of her own annoyance enter her voice. "You saw us kiss downstairs."

"Not like that. I mean really kissed you?" The duchess explained, desperate for an answer. "Kissed you so that you felt changed afterward. Kissed you so that you never wanted the kiss to end, kissed you in such a way that you would do anything for him. Give yourself to him. Love him for all eternity."

The blood rushed to Toph's cheeks as she heard the question. She remembered that first real kiss they had shared on the road. The kiss she had never wanted to end. The kiss that told her that Sokka loved her. The kiss that had changed her life.

"No, of course not." She lied. "I mean Sokka's a really good kisser and all, but the kind of kiss you are talking about is silly."

"Toph, dear, this is really important." Poppy explained. "The Water People have this power, this special, well some call it magic, but our newer philosophers believe that it is something in their… well… mouth water …"

"Mouth water?" Toph asked confused.

"Well… Saliva." Her mother said, embarrassed as if saying a dirty word. "That acts like a poison or a drug, and it changes anyone that they kiss."

"Once you get wet you never forget." Toph said thoughtfully, remembering back to Ty Lee and her talk of Water Tribe wet kisses.

"What?!" Poppy asked horrified.

"Oh… nothing!" Toph told her, not realizing that she had said it out loud. "Just something that a friend had told me a while ago."

"Toph please listen, you have to be very careful. He may be using his powers on you, taking advantage of you. I don't want you kissing him ever again. You need to stay away from him until he leaves. You don't know the danger you are in."

"Mother please, you sound like someone out of an old story." Toph reassured her. "Nothing like that is going on. It's just that I love Sokka and he loves me. It has nothing to do with magic or spit or anything else."

"Young Lady this is serious. I forbid you to kiss that man ever again." The Grand Duchess commanded.

"Forget it mother!" Toph declared standing and balling her fists at her side. "I will kiss anyone I want to, be with anyone I want to, any time I want to, and there is nothing you can say or do that will stop me."

Poppy rose from the couch confronting her daughter.

"Just wait till I tell your father about this young lady." The Grand Duchess told her daughter. "I'm sure he will have something to say about all this, and especially about that young man!"

Before Toph could reply the door opened and Poor Girl wheeled in a cart covered with the tea service. The two women sat down in silence as the young servant set out the tea on the low table.

X

Sokka pulled the most recent scroll from the stack as he sat at the long table. Lao was sitting beside him examining one of the Air Nomad "books". The tribesman was starting with the most recent letter in the pile, even though it was less convenient, so that he could respond to any emergencies that had arisen in his absence.

"I've never seen writing like this." The Grand Duke murmured examining the leaves of the strange book.

"Neither have I, your grace." Sokka remarked as he broke the seal on the scroll and unrolled it. "I have a book that will teach me this one language, and then another one in that language that will teach me this language. I only hope that Aang will be able to help."

"Oh of course you're a companion to Avatar Aang?" Lao said still examining the page before him, until a laugh from the young man caused him to look up.

"Is that a dry pen?" The Grand Duke asked seeing the object in his tablemate's left hand.

"Yes, your grace." Sokka affirmed handing it over.

"These are very convenient." The duke told the young man. "One of my managers sent me some from our office in Ba Sing Se, and I use them all the time. I had him send enough for my entire staff here. And they liked them so much I had Chongan place a large order for all my offices."

Lao examined the dry pen. As far as he could see it was the standard type that he had. The charcoal tube wrapped in white paper with the conical pointed mountain logo and the letters "NAT Enterprises" stamped on it in black ink. He didn't see anything funny about it.

The Grand Duke handed the writing implement back to the young man and received a small slip of paper in exchange. It had apparently been wrapped around the cylinder in the scroll. He read it with interest. It was a bill from NAT Enterprises for one dry pen, cost three hundred and forty seven gold, six silver, and nine copper pieces. The bottom was stamped paid in full.

"I don't understand." Lao said holding up the bill. "These only cost five or six coppers. You didn't seriously buy one for this much did you?"

"Well yes, your grace, I did pay that much for this particular dry pen." Sokka said with a smile, taking back the bill. "My partner is having a little joke with me. We've been making dry pens for about three months now, and the sales are doing very well. The pens are made by hand, which is most of the cost of producing them. Early on I thought we really should be able to make a machine that would make them much more cheaply and very much faster."

"So I came up with some rough designs and sent them to Teo, he's my partner in all this. Teo's very good at looking at my crazy ideas and turning them into something that will actually work. He's great with gears and pistons, and rollers, and that stuff. So together we designed a machine to make dry pens.

"Well just a few days ago Teo started the dry pen maker up and it worked. And this…" Sokka held up the dry pen sent in the scroll. "… is the first one made. It cost me that much to build the machine, so that's why he sent me the bill for this one pen. But the next pen only cost about one and a quarter coppers to make and we will continue to sell them for five each. Plus the machine makes thousands an hour so we will not have any supply problems, even for large orders, like yours."

"So you invented the dry pen and then set up a business to make and sell them?" The Grand Duke asked.

"Yes, your grace. As you said they are very convenient." Sokka replied, putting down the pen and the bill and returning to the scroll.

"Where did you get the nearly four hundred gold it cost you to make the machine?" Lao asked. "Have you made that much selling them."

"Oh… well no your grace." Sokka replied looking up from the scroll. "Your daughter and I have engaged in a number of… business deals. It started during the war as a way of financing the Avatar's activities against the Fire Nation, and we continued after the war as a way of raising funds for various projects I had. Toph is a real master of… business. She must get it from you. I'm not sure what she did with her half, but I used mine to pay for projects like the dry pen machine, and the rain bath business, and the note book business."

"So you also invented the rain bath and turned that into a business as well?" Lao asked.

"Yes your grace." Sokka replied happy to leave the subject of Toph and pulling scams on crooked gamblers.

"Interesting…" The Grand Duke mused staring at the young man. "And then you and my daughter raised funds to finance your businesses, and you brought in this Teo to help with the more technical aspects."

"Yes, your grace." The teen affirmed.

"And you say that Toph is good at business?" Lao asked a little smile playing across his lips at the idea.

"Oh yes, your grace, she's a real master at making… deals." Sokka happily told the noble man. "You might say she's famous in Ba Sing Se for her deals."

"Really?" The Grand Duke asked the smile now very evident on his face.

"Oh most assuredly, your grace!" Sokka enthusiastically replied.

"Well… well." Lao mused, the large grin still on his face, as he turned back to examine the Air Nomad book before him.

Sokka pulled out his note book and dry pen and began making notes in the book and in the margins of the scroll as he worked through it. Lao, while still ostensibly examining the ancient book before him, was actually watching the young man, and reading the notes he was making.

Eventually the tribesman excused himself and retrieved his portable writing desk from his pack, and unrolled it on the table. The Grand Duke surreptitiously watched the young man at work.

As Sokka unrolled the leather bundle a number of sealed scrolls rolled out. He picked them up and struck his forehead with his free hand.

"Your grace." The young man said turning to the Grand Duke. "I have a number of letters I need to send. These three I need to get to Ba Sing Se as soon as possible. Would it be alright if I used your hawks to send them out? I'll gladly pay for the inconvenience to you."

"It will be my pleasure." Lao said rising from his chair and taking the three sealed scrolls. "You are my guest, and it is the least I can do."

The Grand Duke walked to his desk and, Sokka was happy to see, used a NAT enterprises dry pen to make a quick note on a sheet of paper and wrapped the scrolls in it. He laid the bundle in a tray on his desk, and then he gave a light pull on a sash hanging from the ceiling near his desk.

"Those three will go out right away." Lao said returning to the table. "I have a special relay system set up between here and Ba Sing Se and a few other select offices for important business correspondence. I've instructed that those scrolls are to be sent using that method. They should be in Ba Sing Se by tomorrow evening at the latest."

"Thank you, your grace." Sokka responded, giving his host a deep bow. "I am deeply grateful. Are you sure I can't repay you for the service in some way?"

"Not at all." Lao said magnanimously, resuming his seat at the table. "I saw that one was addressed 'Personal for Avatar Aang', and one for Iroh of the Jasmine Dragon, and the last for a Miu at NAT Enterprises, with all their addresses. Now of course I know who the Avatar is. But this Iroh, he wouldn't happen to be the General and Prince Iroh of the Fire Nation, known as the Dragon of the West, who abdicated his inheritance and became the Grand Master of the Order of the White Lotus, would he?"

Sokka sat down in his chair. The order was out in the open now after the liberation of the capital city. And it really was not surprising that someone as well placed and as wealthy as the Grand Duke knew who the Grand Master of the Order was. The tribesman realized that there was no longer any reason to hide the truth, especially from Lao.

"Yes your grace." The young man affirmed. "And Miu is in charge of my business interests in Ba Sing Se."

"I've also noticed that you have received scrolls from all over the world." The Grand Duke said examining the tribesman. "There are two, marked personal from Fire Lord Zuko. Also a number from the Avatar, the ruling council in Ba Sing Se, one from Chief Arnook of the Northern Water Tribe, as well as from the chief of the Southern Tribe, and even one from King Bumi in Omashu."

"Oh the South pole one is probably from my Grandmother, your grace." Sokka explained with a little embarrassed laugh.

"Your grandmother?" Lao asked raising an eyebrow.

"Yes your grace. She's the tribal chief of the Southern Tribe. Sort of the political head of the tribe." The young man told him, not sure how much his host already knew, he did seem to be well informed. "My father is the War Chief of the tribe."

"And you also rescued his Majesty King Kuei from the fall of the capital during the war, which puts him in your debt. If he ever returns." The Grand Duke said.

"Oh… I have a feeling that his Majesty will be back sooner than the ruling council expects." Sokka confided. "But yes, your grace, I do know his majesty personally."

"So…" Lao drawled, looking closely at Sokka. "You are either related to, or friends with all the rulers of the world. Is that right?"

"Well I never thought about it quite like that but I guess you could say that." The young man said thoughtfully, and then he looked at his host and added. "And now I know you too."

The Grand Duke raised an eyebrow at that statement, then a smile moved onto his face as he said,

"Yes, yes you do."

The sound of the door opening caught the attention of both men as Hong entered the library.

"You rang your grace?" The butler intoned.

X

Poppy sipped her herbal tea. It was very sweet, she had had to add a lot of honey to it just to calm herself down, after Toph's little outburst. The Grand Duchess was not going to let her daughter's defiance get her upset. Getting upset just gave her more wrinkles, and she had enough of them already.

No, the Grand Duchess would not let Toph upset her. She was just looking out for her daughter's best interests. The girl obviously did not know or understand these Water Tribe men the way her mother did.

Poppy had read countless stories, all of them based on real incidents, or so the authors maintained, about how these Water Tribesmen seduced innocent young Earth Kingdom girls, using their magic kiss on them to enslave them to their evil will. No, Poppy would save Toph, though from her daughter's reaction it might already be too late. No, she would get her husband to straighten the young girl out.

The duchess took another sip of the soothing tea and came to a decision. She would waist no more time on this silly crush her daughter had. Poppy had to focus on the important things now that Toph was home. The party took precedence over everything now.

The woman finished the last of her sweet tea, resolved to get to work, and save her daughter's life.

.

Toph used her chop sticks to bring another ball of rice to her mouth. She grimaced as the offensive thing hit her tongue. The blind girl didn't mind a little honey used as a sauce, but these things must have been soaking in it for hours and they were overly sweet, sticky, stomach churning clumps of honey stuck together with a little rice.

The small bender was starving after her light breakfast, which had been hours ago, and that had spurred her on to take the second sweet from the bowl, but it was just too much. She set down the bowl and chopsticks, and quickly grabbed her cup to wash the cloying sticky mess down her gullet with the hot perfume her mother called tea. She got it down, where it landed in her stomach like some sort of bog monster.

Toph took another sip of the herbal tea. She would not let her mother get to her. Katara was bad enough, with always telling her what to do, but now her mother was suddenly interested in her, and telling her how to live her life. Well the blind girl would just have to let it go. She would let her mother say whatever she wanted, and then Toph would just do whatever she wanted. It was a technique she had learned from Sokka for dealing with Katara, and the earthbender had found it to be an excellent way of dealing with mothers.

.

"Toph, dear." Poppy said putting down her cup. "We'll need to talk about that boy later; right now we need to discuss your birthday party."

"Yes, mother." Toph intoned, she was not looking forward to this conversation either.

"These next four days are going to be very busy if we are going to get everything done we need to." The Duchess said, putting down her tea cup and picking up her bowl of rice balls.

"Yes mother." Toph said in a dull voice.

"Tomorrow morning after breakfast the designers will be here to measure you and select fabrics." The older woman said. "I've already approved the designs, but you seem to have grown since we had anything made for you."

From her tone the duchess seemed to think that this had been in very poor taste on Toph's part.

"And I suppose that you will want that boy in attendance at the party?" Poppy asked in an unhappy tone.

"His name is Sokka mother." Toph corrected. "And Katara and Aang will be bringing all his stuff down from Ba Sing Se, including his dress robes."

_Besides…_ The young bender thought with a little smile. _I got him something to wear that you're just going to love!_

"Well they'll just have to fit him in tomorrow." The duchess sighed. "I'm sure they will be able to come up with something presentable."

"Yes mother." Toph replied, the smile still gracing her lips.

"Then after lunch will be dance lessons." Poppy went on enthusiastically.

"I know how to dance, mother." The blind girl objected.

"This dance will be your moment to shine, dear." The duchess explained. "It will be your entry into society. It must be perfect."

"Yes, mother." Toph replied, boredom entering her tone.

"The next morning will be more dance practice." The woman went on. "Then in the afternoon, my secretary, Miss Lo, will go over the invitation list with you, so you will know who everyone is."

"Oh goody." Toph said in as dead a voice as she could manage.

"The third morning will be the designers again for final fittings." Poppy went on un-phased.

"Then after lunch…" The duchess continued when her daughter made no comment. "…will be the rehearsal for your entrance and after that more time with Miss Lo to go over the schedule and the guest list again."

Toph remained silent sipping her tea.

"Then the morning of the party will be a treat for us." Poppy said conspiratorially. "I've arranged a spa morning for the two of us. Madame Tuan will be bringing all her supplies and people out to pamper us and make us look beautiful for the party."

"Hooray." Toph said, giving her best impression of Mai.

The duchess popped the honey rice ball into her mouth and let the sweetness coat her tongue. That had actually gone better than she had hoped, after her daughter's outburst earlier. She swallowed the sweet mess. She would have to be careful or she would not fit into her new ensemble that she was getting for the party. She decided that after dinner she would have to put her finger down her throat, that should take care of any worries.

X

Sokka chewed on the steamed dumpling and gave a low hum of pleasure as the taste of the spiced meat moved across his tongue. He was starving and this was delicious. This was the third dumpling he had eaten and the first two had been just as good as this one.

"These are wonderful." The young man complimented his host, putting down his bowl and chop sticks and picking up his cup of tea.

Lao who had eaten one himself just to be a polite host nodded in agreement. The kitchen staff had done an excellent job.

The Grand Duke turned his cup in his hands enjoying the warmth of the tea. It was a fine day out on the library patio, but it was late fall and there was a cool breeze, and the warm cup felt good in his hands.

Sokka took a sip of the tea. It was hot and strong, just the way he liked it.

The older man studied the younger one sitting across the small iron table from him.

"My daughter…" Lao finally said into the silence, he tried to give the words as little value as he could, letting the bait just sit in the water, waiting to see what it would draw to it.

Sokka stared at his tea for a moment, then he raised his head and leaning forward looked the older man in the eye.

"I love Toph very much, your grace." He told the Grand Duke. "And in four or five years, after we have grown up some, I hope that she will marry me."

"That sounds like a long time for a young man in love?" Lao commented.

"A third of my life your grace." The tribesman answered. "But we are both very young and have yet to find our way in the world. Who knows tomorrow Toph may wake up and decide she can't stand me. Of course I hope that day never comes, but I feel we have to find out who we are before we can give ourselves to someone else. I didn't always feel that way but I do now, maybe I've grown up a little at this point."

Sokka gave a little self deprecating laugh at this last.

"You've obviously thought about this quite a lot." The Grand Duke observed.

"Yes, your grace." The younger man said with the same little laugh. "Toph makes fun of me for all my planning and puzzle solving, but I think she loves me a little bit for it too. I guess it's just the way I am. I see what I want and try to figure out the best way to get it."

"How long have you known my daughter?" The older man asked.

"We met during that first visit with Aang all those months ago, your grace." The younger man answered. "At first I didn't like her. She was arrogant and abrasive. Something I'm sure she never learned from her parents."

Sokka said this last with a little bow toward his host.

"Of course not." Lao agreed with a little smile, returning the bow.

"But then as I got to know her better, and we started working together I began to like her more and more." The tribesman continued staring down into his tea cup. "Until we became friends, good friends. Then over this last month or so, for me that friendship changed and became more, until I realized just how much she means to me. Now I can't see my life without her in it. I need her."

"I see." Lao said, staring at the younger man's face. "I assume you will want my permission to marry my daughter."

"I would hope for your blessing, your grace." Sokka said looking up into his host's eyes. "But the only permission I will need to marry Toph will be hers. I mean no disrespect your grace, and I know that Toph loves you and would want your blessing, but we both know she will do what she wants, and there is nothing either of us can do about that."

"If Toph marries without my permission, I will cut her off." The Grand Duke said, giving the younger man a hard look. "She will get nothing from me, and I will cut her out of my will and she won't inherit anything."

"Forgive me for being somewhat rude, your grace." Sokka said without flinching, meeting Lao's stern look with one of his own. "But do you think Toph really cares about any of that? In all the months I have spent with her the only thing she has missed from you is your love. We have made our way in the world without your wealth and will continue to do so. It means nothing to her, and it means nothing to me."

The two men held each other's gaze for a moment, neither wavering.

"Well said." Lao replied, looking down at his cup.

"Thank you, your grace." Sokka said with a confused look at the nobleman.

"You have my permission to call on my daughter." The Grand Duke said smiling.

"Thank you your grace." The young man replied still confused.

It was quiet for a time, the young man looking at the older, the older staring into his cup.

"Did you mean that?" Lao finally said. "About Toph only wanting my love?"

"Of course, your grace." Sokka answered. "That's all any child ever wants..., their parents' love."

"Of course… of course…" The older man agreed, his brow furrowed and still staring at his tea.

.

For the rest of the afternoon, Sokka worked on reading and responding to his letters, Lao watched Sokka, and worked at his desk in the library. Poppy and Toph didn't talk about Sokka, but Toph had to listen to all her mother's plans for the party. By the time the dinner gong sounded all four of them were ready for a change of company and some food.

.

"Toph…!" The Grand Duke said when he saw his daughter enter the dining room.

The blind woman stopped short and stood up straight.

"Yes father?" She asked eventually.

"A… yes…" Lao said looking at his daughter and then at Sokka, and then back to Toph.

"It's just that…" The older man said walking stiffly up to the young woman.

"Ah…. I… ah…." Lao stopped before the blind girl and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"That is… your mother and I…" The Grand Duke shot a look at his wife and then seemed to be studying his slippers for a time.

"Well… I… a… no, we…" The older man said.

"We just want you to know…." Lao finally raised his eyes to his daughter's face.

"How happy I… no, we… are that you have returned to us." The father gave a slight sigh of relief, but then steeled himself for the next part.

"And that we…" With this he made a gesture to include his wife. "…Love you."

With this last the Grand Duke took a small step into his daughter and awkwardly wrapped his arms around her in a tentative embrace.

Toph was entirely caught off guard by the action and just stood stiffly for a few seconds. Eventually she put her arms around her father and hugged him to her.

"I love you too." The blind woman said in a quiet voice.

Lao patted her on the back twice and then released her, pulling back a small step when she let her hands drop from around him.

"Yes… Well… There…" The father said sounding uncomfortable yet very relieved. "We should probably eat now."

Toph turned towards Sokka and gave him a questioning look, he replied with a small shrug, but her bending could not detect the small smile that played across his lips at her father's performance.

Lao sat at the head of the table, Toph on his right, and Sokka on his left, Poppy sat at the other end.

Each of the diners had an attendant that stood behind their chair and served the dishes. Sokka shifted into his fancy restaurant persona, using his best manners, though he always felt uncomfortable having someone standing behind him watching him eat.

The meal was silent at first. Just the sound of porcelain soup ladles on porcelain bowls.

"This soup is delicious." Sokka finally commented to fill the quiet. "Better than the soup at the Grand Panda."

"But not as good as the soup we had at that inn the other day." Toph replied, smiling.

"Yes, that was the best soup I've ever had." Sokka agreed sharing a smile with his girlfriend.

"So you stayed at inns?" Poppy asked.

"Sometimes." The young man replied as the soup was taken away and more dishes were served. "But mostly we just camped by the road."

"That sounds very exciting, and so liberating." The Grand Duke remarked.

"By yourselves?" The Grand Duchess asked.

"Mostly." Toph answered, a wicked little grin playing across her face.

"Wasn't it dangerous?" Lao asked.

"Not when you're with the greatest bender in the world." Sokka replied.

"Sokka is a great warrior." Toph added. "He took care of anyone who was a real problem."

"Just the two of you?" Poppy asked.

"Yes mother." The blind girl answered.

"Sometimes we would camp with friends we had made on the road." Sokka amplified.

"But mostly it was just the two of us." Toph went on.

"What did you do for food and shelter?" Lao asked interested in the tale now.

"Toph would bend an earthtent whenever we needed one." Sokka explained.

"And Sokka would hunt and cook for us." Toph added enjoying her mother's discomfort.

"We would also buy supplies and eat at inns and taverns along the way." Sokka added.

"Just the one tent?" The Grand Duchess asked, some of her horror coming through.

"That's all we needed." The blind girl said.

"It's much warmer that way." The young man explained.

"Sleep alone, die alone." Toph said, the wicked little grin becoming a full on smile. "That's a Water Tribe saying."

"How freeing that would be." Lao exclaimed. "Just think Poppy, just the two of us, out in the wild, no cares, no business decisions. I could fish for our meals. We should try it sometime."

"Water Tribe saying?" The Grand Duchess asked in a horrified whisper. "So you two slept together?"

"Back home we need to share body heat at night, your grace." Sokka explained. "My whole family slept in the same bed. You put the children in the center and the parents sleep on the sides."

"That's interesting." Lao commented.

"Sokka's really good at sharing body heat." Toph added to her mother. "It's a Water Tribe thing."

"Do you fish, your grace?" Sokka asked the Grand Duke to change the subject, which for some reason seemed to be causing Toph a great amount of glee, but was upsetting her mother.

"Just a little." Lao answered. "We have a lovely little stream here on the property that I use sometimes. It's so relaxing to just forget all my work for a morning and sit by the stream."

"May I join you the next time you go out, your grace?" The young man asked. "I just got a new fishing rod and would love to try it out sometime."

"Yes of course." The Grand Duke said. "Maybe we can sneak a morning in before the party."

"I would like that." The young man said with gusto. "And we could eat what we caught for lunch."

The conversation between the older man and the younger one turned to different types of fishing gear and tackle after that. The conversation between the mother and daughter died.

The meal continued with the conversation between the two men moving from fishing to the post war world and what it would be like. At some points Lao wished he could take notes. The younger man's ideas were insightful and very apt.

"In your travels have you heard anything of this Black Lotus?" the Grand Duke asked at one point.

"Just rumors, your grace." Sokka answered, shooting a look to Toph.

For her part, the blind girl didn't say anything, but did sit up a little straighter in her chair.

"Oh the tales are quite wonderful." Poppy interjected, happy to finally have a topic she could join in on, being something of an expert. "I have a girl that goes into the city, and she brings back the most amazing stories of the Black Lotus and the White Queen. They say she is beautiful and elegant, dressed all in white, and that he is handsome, dark and mysterious, all in black. They travel the kingdom, rooting out evil and punishing the wicked. They'll be one place and then just disappear for days or weeks and then suddenly appear wherever people are in need."

"Well I think these stories have to be taken with a grain of salt." Lao commented. "You know how things can be exaggerated in the retelling."

"That is so true your grace." Sokka agreed, then he turned to the duchess. "Though I believe that the White Queen is beautiful, for what is a good story without a beautiful woman, such as yourself or your daughter."

Poppy smiled shyly at the complement. Toph raised an eyebrow at him.

"They say he is a very dangerous man, but that he only kills the benders." The Grand Duchess went on. "And that he does it all to prove his love for the White Queen. There is even a song about the two of them. I had Niu learn it and sing it for me."

"Perhaps you can have her sing it for all of us later." Lao suggested.

"Yes of course." Poppy beamed, enjoying the attention.

.

After dinner the Grand Duke asked them all to accompany him.

"I have a little… something I want to do." He told them as he led them from the dinning room.

Poppy excused herself.

"To freshen my makeup." The Grand Duchess had told them. "I'll be right back."

Toph and Sokka were led to the audience chamber they had been in before. Hong was waiting at the double doors again just as he had been earlier that day. The room was the same as it had been except for the addition of two chairs just to the right hand side of Lao's chair, and a heavy wooden table set in the center of the room. On the table was a heavy iron bound chest of medium size.

Lao took his place in his chair and indicated Toph and Sokka to sit in the two new chairs. Hong stood by the table. Madame Wang and Poor Girl stood to the side of the room. The two guards stood by the door.

As the three waited for the Grand Duchess to arrive, Toph became more and more restless.

"Do we have to wait?" The blind woman finally asked. "I still have to bend that guest house for Sokka and it's getting late."

She reached over and took her boyfriend's hand as they sat there.

"I'm fine Toph." Sokka said giving her hand a little squeeze. "I can sleep on the floor of the library. It will be better than a lot of places we've had to camp."

"Please be patient, dear." Her father asked her. "Your mother will be here soon and it is important that she is here for this."

"What is… this?" Toph asked.

"Well…dear…" Lao haltingly explained. "This is… well… this is a little attempt… I want to correct something… a mistake that I… well… we really… made a while ago."

"I guess it really is the start of our trying to correct a lot of mistakes we have made for a long time now." The Grand Duke continued more fluidly, as if he had run this little speech in his mind for a while now.

"Mistakes?" Toph asked.

"Yes dear." Lao told her. "And I want you to know that everything we have done, we did because we love you. We wanted to protect you, and make your life easier. I can see now that we were wrong. After I saw what you did to those fighters in the arena, that night those professional earthbenders kidnapped you and the Avatar, I began to realize just how wrong I was. Now with your exploits in the war, I can see just how mistaken your mother and I have been. But I hope you will remember that to me you are my little girl, my one and only very precious daughter, and even though I may have been… well... was wrong about so many things, that your mother and I just love you, and have always wanted what was best for you."

Lao took a deep breath and slumped back into his chair.

"I'm much better at business than I am a being a parent." He said frowning.

"Then you must be a great business man, your grace, since I think you're doing a pretty good job at being a parent." Sokka reassured him with a smile.

"Yeah." Toph said her voice deep and her eyes burning, as she reached out and took her father's hand.

The three sat holdings hands until Poppy finally arrived. Sokka was the first to stand and bow at her entrance, followed by Toph who let go of her father's hand but still held onto the tribesman's.

"Ah, my dear, everything alright?" Lao asked rising to help his wife into her chair.

"Fine!" The Grand Duchess said, taking her seat.

Poppy looked a little pale to Sokka's eye, but it could have just been the fresh makeup she had put on.

Once everyone was seated again the Grand Duke addressed his daughter and their guest.

"When Toph first left us to aid the Avatar, we mistakenly believed that she had been coerced into leaving." Lao began. "Once we received your letter explaining that you had left of your own accord, we realized our mistake. But before its arrival I had offered a reward for your safe return. Master Yu, your earthbending teacher, and Xin Fu who headed the Earth Rumble offered to bring you back. We learned later that they used underhanded and unscrupulous methods to actually kidnap you, which, apparently, was a terrible mistake on their part."

"What happened to them?" Toph asked with a laugh.

"From what I could gather…" Lao answered, a smile playing across his lips. "They were found trapped in some metal cell on a cart. Whoever found them was nice enough to take the cart to the nearest village, where a blacksmith spent most of a day getting them out. By the time they returned, we had received your letter and had rescinded the reward."

"But now that you are safe with us again…" Her father continued. "… and by your own words you would not be here but for the help of this young man, I feel it is only fit that the reward for your safe return be given to him."

Lao gestured to Hong, who pulled open the lid of the chest revealing its contents. The butler had gone to a little trouble in setting the table and chest and arranging the lighting in the room to create a dramatic effect. The servant prided himself on his dramatic effects.

The gold coins in the chest caught the light beautifully in their perfect rows, sparkling and filling the room with a warm golden light.

Hong allowed himself a tiny little smile of satisfaction at the reaction he received from his presentation, until he heard Toph's voice.

"What?!" The blind girl asked.

"Ahhhh… Gold coins." Sokka said, his voice cracking high on the coins part.

"Ten thousand gold coins." Lao explained, smiling.

"That's a lot!" Toph noted.

Sokka stood, releasing her hand, and bowed to the Grand Duke.

"Your grace…" The young man said rising from his bow. "… This is a magnificent gift and I hope I don't appear rude or ungrateful when I tell you I am honored but I can't accept it."

"Why not?!" Toph exclaimed. "Just think of the fun we could have with that much gold."

"Toph!" Sokka admonished his girlfriend, giving her a look which was totally lost on her. "Your grace, I accompanied your daughter not for any reward but because she was my friend, and I loved her. For my efforts I have received a reward far greater than any the world could offer me. She has given me her love, and any other reward, no matter how generous, or how graciously given, would only tarnish the one reward that I truly desire."

Sokka then took Toph's hand and kissed it. She blushed prettily at the complement. The young woman stood up and taking his head in her hands she pulled him down and kissed him on the lips, a warm, generous kiss of love.

There was squeak from her mother, and hearty applause from her father.

"I told you he wouldn't take it." Lao told his wife, who didn't seem to be listening at that moment.

"Wrong!" Toph said in a loud clear voice. "He's taking it."

"Toph…" Sokka began but was cut off.

"Shut up Meathead!" The bender ordered, taking his hand and turning toward her father. "He's taking it!"

"He said she had a good head for business." Lao boasted conspiratorially to his wife.

"Good then that's settled." The Grand Duke said turning to his daughter and her boyfriend. "I will have transportation arranged for wherever you want it delivered."

"Your grace…" Sokka began but Toph elbowed him in the stomach and all he was able to continue with was a loud, "OOOFFF!"

"Excellent!" Lao said rising. "Now Toph dear, you spoke of giving us a demonstration of your earth bending."

"It will be my pleasure father." Toph said giving a small bow.

"But Toph!" Sokka said.

"Quiet, Stupid!" Toph ordered, jerking on his hand, letting some anger enter her voice.

"You better listen to her." Lao advised laughing. "You should never get between a Be Fong and their profit."

"Yes your grace." The young man agreed, still rubbing the rapidly forming bruise on his stomach.

.

The four adjourned to the small garden behind the main house. The three non-benders stood and watched as Toph prowled the garden for a while. Finally she returned and began a complex earthbending form.

At first no change could be seen, but then slowly at first, but more rapidly as the small bender continued the form, a small spire began to rise out of the open grassy central lawn of the garden.

"My beautiful garden." Poppy moaned.

But she was hushed by her husband who was fascinated by his daughter's bending.

Soon other spires joined the first then a central dome and then more domes and towers until Sokka, who was the only one who had ever actually seen it recognized what Toph was creating.

"It's Wan Shi Tong's library." He said in wonder as a miniature of the giant building rose out of the ground.

Toph finished the form, the strain evident in her breathing and the light sheen of sweat on her forehead. She had been planning this all through the long afternoon of not listening to her mother's plans for her birthday party, and getting the detail right had been a strain.

"It's beautiful, Toph!" Sokka exclaimed grabbing the young woman up in a hug and kissing her. "You are just so amazing."

"I've seen drawings of it." Lao said looking in wonder at it. "How did you know what it looked like?"

"She's been there." Sokka explained swinging Toph around in his hug.

"Toph, you've been to Wan Shi Tong's library?" The Grand Duke asked.

"She saved our lives." The young man said setting the blind bender down. "Wan Shi Tong was sinking it into the sand and she stood toe to toe with him and used her bending to keep it above ground till we could get out."

"Well… not toe to toe." Toph corrected. "He was inside and I was outside but yeah, I held my own, though I couldn't save Appa."

"You took on an ancient spirit by yourself?" Lao asked in wonder.

"You bet she did!" Sokka exclaimed, hugging her again. "She's the greatest bender who will ever live."

"Amazing!" The Grand Duke said.

"You haven't heard the best part." Toph told her parents pulling herself free from the young man. "Aang told me about what happened inside the library."

"So, Wan Shi Tong is this huge owl, right." She said holding up her arms to simulate wings.

Aang had acted out the story for her some months ago and she retold it acting it out and using the voices as he had.

"And he's chasing Katara all over the place, and he gets her cornered, so she takes a stance, ready to fight and he says, 'you won't find your water bending any use here. I know Northern Style, Southern Style and Foggy Swamp Style.' And Katara's in real trouble, but right then Sokka jumps like a thousand strides down from the ceiling and smashes him right on the head and says, 'That's Sokka Style, learn it!'."

"You did that?!" Lao asked, wonder evident in his tone.

"Well… Sokka said trying to be modest, but without much success. "He didn't see me coming. But yeah that's pretty much what happened. But except for Toph holding the whole library up, we'd still be in there."

"We make a great team!" Toph said punching Sokka in the arm.

"Yes you do." Lao said the pride evident in his voice.

Poppy didn't say anything.

.

Lao relaxed in his comfortable chair in the sitting room that divided his own suite of rooms from those of his wife's. It was their usual custom to meet there and wish each other good night before going to their separate bedrooms to sleep. They had not slept together for nearly twelve years.

He took a sip of the plumb wine he normally had before going to bed. His wife, sitting across from him took a sip of her herb tea. She always had a sweetened cup before retiring. She swirled the liquid in her mouth to clear it of the bad taste from earlier.

"What are we going to do about that boy?" Poppy asked her husband.

"What do you mean?" He asked in reply setting down his cup.

"Well he's Water Tribe for one thing." The Grand Duchess explained. "And he's a peasant. His majesty would never approve a… liaison between our family and someone so foreign and low born. We need to end this… relationship now, before it becomes too serious and Toph gets hurt."

"His grandmother is the tribal chief of the Southern Water Tribe; in essence she is their queen. His father is their equivalent to a crown prince, and since Sokka is the first born he is the next in line to the throne, there version of a prince in waiting. If anything he is higher in precedence than Toph is, and will have to get a dispensation from his family for marrying below his station, if it comes to that. And besides that, he has a personal relationship with every ruler in the world and the Avatar. As for getting his majesty, King Kuei's permission, the King owes the two of them his freedom if not his life, and would probably grant them anything."

"But he's just some wandering mercenary, how will he support and take care of our daughter." She argued, frustrated by her husband's lack of understanding of the real difficulty.

"From everything that I have been able to find out, he is an incredibly brave and able warrior who has distinguished himself in the war." Lao explained. "Who, by Toph's own admission, has saved her life on numerous occasions."

"Yes, alright… But he has nothing." Poppy went on, dread and anger giving force to her words. "He sleeps by the road side like some vagabond."

"At the very least he has ten thousand in gold." The Grand Duke laughed.

"He has a business that he has started all on his own, using his own ideas and has turned it into a success. He has a better head for business than anyone I have ever met. He has even gotten Toph interested in business. The two of them will be unstoppable. Would you rather have her marry some pampered fool who has never done, and never will do, anything of note. He is the only man that our daughter will ever meet that will not think of her money before he thinks of her."

"But… He's Water Tribe!" Poppy finally said in frustration.

"Which means he is resourceful, brave, and loyal. If in the years to come, they stay together, I will gladly give them my permission and my blessing."

"You just won't see it will you?" The Grand Duchess said standing up. "Well good night!"

"Good night." Lao said as she left the room.

The Grand Duke finished his wine and went to his own bed, realizing once again, he was much better at business then he was at family.

.

"You're not going to wear that to bed, are you?" Madame Wang asked in a scandalized voice.

Toph was in Sokka's old top over her loin cloth.

"Yes." Was the young woman's sharp answer.

"But you have such lovely pajamas and silk robes." The servant said pointing to the wardrobe.

"I like this." Toph told her with a tone that ended any more discussion.

"Very well, mistress." Madame Wang said pulling down the covers for the girl.

"You can go now. I won't be needing you any more for the night." The blind girl told the servant.

"But mistress…" The older woman began, but was cut off by the younger.

"I can piss by myself!" Toph told her. "Good night!"

This last was not a pleasantry but a command, and the governess obeyed it with very ill grace.

After the servant left, Toph sent out her bending to make sure the house was down for the night and that she was alone. After some minor metal bending, she opened the doors in the window of the bed room, and walked out onto the railed balcony over looking the garden.

The small bender took her horse stance and checked the area for guards. Finding none she launched her self over the railing and into space. The earth reached up and caught her, lowering her swiftly yet gently to the ground.

.

Sokka lay under the central dome of the earth bent library. The miniature building was open on the inside, but Toph had added a raised platform as a bed. The tribesman had gotten his gear from the Grand Duke's library and settled himself in the new guest house, laying out his ground cloth and blanket on the platform. He had attempted to bring Hawky in as well but the raptor had refused, preferring to guard the young man's correspondence which was still on the long table.

Hong had provided a number of glow crystal holders and Sokka had set them up around the bed so he could read. He was studying one of the language books when he felt a slight tremor in the earth.

He set his book off to the side and threw the blanket off of himself, and waited. Soon he was rewarded with the sound of bare feet running through the short passage leading from the entrance to the main room of the miniature. Then the sound of Toph's laughter as she launched herself into the air flying straight for him, landing on his chest, which was followed with a quiet,

"Oooofff!" From the young man.

"I thought that was you." He told her as he wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled up so her face was even with his own.

Toph reached out and found his face with her hands. She guided her lips to his were they shared a long, very satisfying kiss.

"Oh I needed that." Toph said finally pulling back.

"You're not the only one." He told her in reply.

She straddled his waist, and pushed herself up. Once sitting she began to explore his strong chest. His hands moved up and down her sides, through the large openings in her robe.

"I've missed you." He told her. "I'm spoiled having you all to myself all this time."

She lay down on his chest, her head just below his chin, the side of her face against his warm skin. He pulled his hands from inside her robe and began to stroke her back.

"You ok?" He asked after a time.

"Yeah." She sighed.

They lay that way for a while.

"You're father seems nice." He finally told her.

"My father was weird!" She corrected, her voice full of consternation.

"What do you mean weird?" He asked.

""I can't remember my father ever touching me, and tonight he hugged me." She explained. "And all that about how he loves me? That was just crazy."

She pushed herself up again.

"What did you say to him?" She asked. "And I'm raising my eyebrow accusingly at you, or at least trying."

"It looks good." He told her appraisingly, and then he laughed. "Nothing much, we talked about a lot of things."

"Well he was weird!" She re-affirmed. "So keep talking to him, cause I kind of liked it."

"Ok." He assured her. "So what did you and your mom talk about?"

"The party mostly." She answered. "Mother is totally going over board on it."

"Thirteen...?" Sokka sang the word. "Why didn't you tell us your birthday was coming up."

"Cause Katara would make a big fuss." Toph answered. "Though not as big as my mother."

She lowered herself onto her elbows and found his face with her hands again.

"My mother also told me that I can't kiss you."

Toph lowered her face to his and opening her mouth captured his lips. This was an aggressive demanding kiss and he answered in kind, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her hard against his chest.

After a moment she pulled back.

"Sooo... None of that?" He asked.

"What?" she asked in return, her breath rasping a little in her throat.

"This." He said capturing her lips again.

This time he was the more forceful one. Holding her head with his large hand, his mouth open and moving against hers. She followed his lead moving her hands up onto his head through his loose hair, holding and pulling him to her.

When he finally pulled away they were both panting a little for various reasons.

"Yeah..." Toph said. "None of that."

"What about this?" Sokka asked moving his head down and kissing the side of her neck.

It was an open mouthed sucking kiss, and she felt his teeth graze lightly across her skin, which sent a warm thrill down her neck and into her chest causing her heart to flutter.

"I don't know." She told him as he continued to kiss down her fine skin.

"It's not like... ahhhhh..." He had just run the tip of his tongue along her artery. "A... real... ooooohh... kiss."

"So then this is ok?" He asked his lips sliding over her skin, moving to the hollow of her throat, where her necklace lay.

"Yesssss...!" She cried out as his tongue licked the spot.

She couldn't take any more and wrenched his head back up, driving her lips onto his.

The kiss went on and on, lips , jaws, heads moving trying to find more and more of the other mouth to contact, to suck on. Toph's hands, hung on to his head, pulling herself closer. Her lips pressed up against her own teeth. Sneaking little gasps of air as the corner of her mouth would be exposed for a moment. On and on, more and more.

Instinctually her hips began to grind against his abdomen. He was only in his loin cloth and she could feel the cloth under her through the skirt of the robe and her own loin cloth. Her heart pounded in her chest, sending pulses into her soft breasts crushed against the hard muscle and bone of his chest.

The kiss went on and on, changing and pulling her closer and closer.

Toph felt something wet move across her lips.

_His tongue_. She realized.

She opened her mouth wider and sent her own tongue between her lips. The contact with his sent a hot thrill through her all the way down her spine to her very core. He sucked her tongue into his mouth, accepting it, wanting it. She pushed it in sliding along his, opening her mouth even more, wanting more contact, wanting more and more, and more.

And then she was on her back and Sokka was on top of her. She wrapped her legs around his hips, locking her ankles on his thighs. His left hand supporting her head, his right inside the open side of her robe stroking up her ribs and down to her hip. His tongue moving into her mouth now, she sucked it in, letting it fill her mouth. His hot breath on her cheek, her heart thudding against her ribs.

She wrapped her arms around his head and neck pulling him down onto her. Straining with her strong legs to pull him harder to her core. She could feel his hard length as they ground against each other. She felt the fire within her grow and grow, filling her, melting her.

She felt/heard the low growl/moan he made into her mouth, and her own desperate cry/moan following on his, created by his.

And then it changed.

She felt it change. She felt him pulling back. His body lifting, tensing and retreating. The kiss becoming less, his tongue pulling back between his lips. She pulled him down to her not wanting to let it end, but it was too late. She felt it herself. Reason had returned, however slowly, and she reluctantly released him.

He raised his head, she could tell he was looking at her. She felt his hot breath on her face mingling with her own as they panted, desperate for air.

"So..." He asked between breaths. "None... of... that?"

"Yeah." She answered.

He lowered his forehead onto hers. She realized for the first time that their faces were slick with a fine perspiration.

"So... This is a special occasion." She observed.

"What?" He asked.

"You said that Humongous Sokka only showed up on special occasions." She explained wriggling her self against him.

That earned her a deep laugh from him.

"Yeah... and if we don't stop now it could be a very messy special occasion." He told her.

"I think it may already be too late." She returned, with a laugh.

Her loin cloth felt very damp.

He joined her in the laugh.

They just lay there for a time, then Sokka gave her a little kiss on the lips and rolled off of her.

"Maybe..." He asked turning toward her. "We could go over this again, tomorrow night? Just to make sure I remember."

"Good for me." She answered.

"You should probably be going." He told her with a sigh.

"I'm sleeping here." She declared.

"But what if they check on you.?" He asked, concern for her evident in his tone.

"They can't!" She told him with a wicked little laugh. "I metal bent all the locks. No one can come into my room unless I let them."

Sokka laughed at that, and rolling onto his side he hugged her to him.

"Toph, have I ever told you how great it is that you invented metal bending?" He asked, giving her a little kiss at the end.

"You could stand to mention it more often." She replied with her own kiss.

"I love you." Sokka said.

"I love you." Toph answered back.

He reached down and pulled their blanket up over them, then he leaned in and rubbed his nose against hers saying,

"Good night girlfriend."

"Good night boyfriend." She answered rubbing back.

The two snuggled down under their blanket in each others arms.

.

Madame Wang sat at her desk in her personal quarters and wept. She couldn't understand it. Her little girl, the delicate little flower, that she had raised since she was a baby had returned changed. The little girl that had needed her for everything was now ordering her out of their room. Telling the governess what to do.

Her little Toph had become some foul mouthed creature. Wearing what must be a water tribe robe. Cavorting with that man, that barbarian.

The servant dried her eyes. She had to do something. She had to save her little girl. And tears would not help.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

Disclaimer: "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

***WARNING***

Sorry everyone who has this story on their alerts. You have gotten an alert that chapter 54 has been added. This was a mistake on my part, I loaded chapter 53 twice. At this time there is no chapter 54. I have deleted the second upload so it should be ok now.

Sorry for the confusion.

Hi All,

So Toph is finally home and Sokka has met Madame Wang and the parents. He met them before but now he is the boyfriend which changes everything. I hope I did ok on that.

Sorry this chapter is so long over 15,000 words. The longest in the story but I felt it was important to cover all of this in one chapter. Maybe I should have broken it up.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks so much for reading.

XXXXXXXXXX

New FanART; Sicksketch has done some wonderful sketches over on Tumblr. Please take a look, just search under the tag "ill walk you home" and you will find them.

Fanart; There is fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

X

Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

X

xx

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	54. Chapter 54

I'll Walk You Home pt. 54

Chapter 19 pt.1

Letters

* * *

Toph was awake. It took her a moment to recall where she was. She managed to disentangle herself from Sokka, not an easy task, his long arms and legs enveloping her, as they lay on their sides facing each other.

"What?!" The boy asked, moving to grab his sword.

Sokka always surprised Toph with how fast he would wake up. One instant he was asleep and the next he was awake and moving. Of course he could fall asleep just as quickly, and often times did in the morning.

"Have to get back to my room." She explained, moving to the edge of the sleeping platform and swinging her legs out and planting her feet on the solid ground.

"Oh... Right." The tribesman said moving to his side of the bed.

Toph stood up, pulling down her sleeping robe, where it had bunched up around her waist in the night. She sent out a quiet wave of bending to feel what was going on around the estate. The garden was clear. She sent out a slightly stronger wave toward the mansion, and felt the tell-tale movement of a few servants moving in the kitchen.

_Still early_. She told herself. _Plenty of time to get back to my room._

"All clear?" Sokka asked.

He had felt the vibrations of her bending beneath his feet.

"All clear." She agreed. "What are you doing?"

"Getting dressed." He answered.

"What for?" She asked

"So I can walk you to your room." He explained.

"I can find my own way, Snoozles." She told him with a little sharpness in her tone.

"Yes of course you can." He told her as he walked around the sleeping platform. "Better than I can, I'm sure."

She felt his arms encircle her as he pulled her into a hug; she sent her own arms around his waist and hugged back.

"I just don't like to say goodbye, even for a little bit, and want to put it off for as long as I can." He said the side of his face against the top of her head.

They stood holding each other for a time.

"I gotta go." Toph finally said.

"Right." Sokka agreed letting her go.

She took his hand and led him into the garden. The moon was not quite a quarter full and high in the western sky so he had no problem following her as she led him to her window.

"This is me." She said turning towards him.

"Right." He told her. "It's maybe an hour... or a little more before sunrise."

The two of them stood for a moment holding hands in the early morning mist.

Toph pulled her hands away and spreading her feet made a downward gesture with her fists. Sokka felt the familiar trembling, and then he felt the earth fall away beneath his feet, and found himself standing in a shallow hole in the ground.

He looked up to see Toph step into him. Her hands found his face and her lips found his as she gave him a long loving kiss, which he returned with all his heart. One of his arms around her waist and the other up her back to her shoulders pulling her tight in against him.

Finally she stepped back, breaking the kiss.

"I love you Toph." Sokka told her in a whisper.

"I love you Sokka." Toph told him in reply.

"See you at breakfast." He said letting her go.

She just stood for a moment, giving him a frustrated look.

"Right..." He said, blushing. "I'll see you and you'll feel... sense me."

"Smartest guy in the world." Toph muttered getting into her bending stance. "And he's still a complete idiot."

An earth pillar shot from the ground and launched her into the air towards the stone balcony of her room. She landed easily and silently. She turned back, and with a gesture the pillar returned into the earth and Sokka's hole pushed him up leaving no sign that the earth near the window had ever been disturbed.

"Don't forget to mess up your bed." Sokka whisper shouted to her.

"I've done this before." Toph whispered shouted to him, leaning over the railing, in as scathing a tone as she could manage in such a quiet voice.

"Right! Sorry!" Sokka whisper shouted back, turning his head down and away from her.

"Now what are you doing?" She asked.

"I'm not looking up your robe." He answered, keeping his head down.

"Oh..." She said pushing the skirt of her robe between her legs.

She could feel the blood rush to her face. Her loin cloth still felt a little damp from last night.

"Toph!" The young man whispered called to her.

"What now?!" She asked letting some irritation enter her quiet question.

"I love you." He answered.

"Go away!" She commanded him. "Or I'm gonna get caught."

"Sorry!" He said a sad tone in his whisper.

He started to walk away.

"Sokka!" Toph whisper called to him.

"Yeah!" He answered looking up, and then quickly looking down again when he realized just what he was seeing.

"I love you too, Meathead." She told him. "Now go away!"

"Right!" He called back running off.

Toph sent her bending after him, and felt him run back towards the earthbent guest house. About half way there he suddenly jumped into the air, spinning around once with his arms held high over his head. He landed at a run and continued on his way.

"What an idiot." The blind girl said under her breath, but with a little smile on her face.

She walked back into her bedroom and closed the window door and latched it. She climbed into her bed and pulled the covers over herself. She lay there for a few seconds, before remembering something.

"Ah... Fuck!" She cursed throwing the covers off and getting out of the bed.

She took her horse stance and felt for the stone under the carpet. She had to metal bend the lock on the door to the suite to release it, but she didn't feel like walking all the way to the door to do it.

Toph had never metal bent from a distance before. Normally she had to be in contact with the metal to bend it, unlike her earthbending, which she could do at a distance.

_But why? _She asked herself. _Metal bending is just another form of earthbending._

She was grumpy at having to sneak around now that she was home, and she just didn't feel like walking through the bathroom, through the school room, just to touch the stupid door. She sent her bending through the stone of the floor to the front door of the suite. She found the door. The blind girl shifted into her forward stance, her right hand forward, and felt for the metal of the lock.

_There!_

Toph turned her hand, bending the small steel parts, and allowing them to move once again. It was a simple, subtle bit of bending that took concentration not power. She felt the metal slip, and a smile moved across her lips.

_I am the greatest!_ She told herself raising her arms over her head in triumph.

The nearly thirteen year old girl climbed back into the bed and pulled the covers over herself. She had time for a nap before the official start of her day. She lay in the cold stiff sheets, in the too soft bed, that cut her off from the world, and gave a sad little sigh as she closed her eyes. She missed Sokka already.

XXX

Madame Wang paced up and down the corridor angry and unsure. She had arrived early to make sure her precious little child was safe and comfortable, but when she had tried to open the door the latch had not moved. It was as if the mechanism was frozen in place. The servant had tried her key, but even that did not move in the lock. And so for an hour she had paced before the door unsure of what to do next.

_Had they changed the lock?_ She wondered.

She could go down and ask Butler Hong to unlock the door for her. He had the master keys for all of the house. But why would he change the lock and not inform her and give her the new key.

Ever since mistress Toph had runaway Madame Wang had been unsure of her place in the house. The blind girl was her responsibility and the servant had failed in her duty. From that moment the governess had been unsure of her place. She had even feared that she might be let go, since her charge had runaway, which had been a failure on Madame Wang's part on many different levels.

_Perhaps Hong wants to get rid of me?_ She wondered pacing. _All the servants may be against me._

She wasn't sure but she was a privileged servant, the governess with access to the Grand Duchess and even the Grand Duke occasionally. The other servants must be jealous of her. They could be trying to get rid of her, get her out of the way.

She continued to pace up and down the hallway.

.

Poor girl stood, holding a rattan cane in her hands, out of the way across from the door and waited.

Poor girl was very good at being out of the way. It was her second greatest skill.

Her greatest skill was her ability to wait. She spent most of her day waiting. Waiting for the order to pick something up, or to put something down. To walk here or walk there. To prepare herself for a beating. For many things. She had years of practice and she was an expert at it. A true master of the art.

To many it would seem that waiting would be easy, but to the true master it was a subtle and complex art. You couldn't just stand and let your mind wander. You had to train your mind to listen for the certain words that you had to respond to. You had to flow into action, as if you had been alert and waiting for that exact command. You could not pause or appear startled.

You could not lean on things, no matter how tired you were, or how little sleep you had had, or how much your knees and back ached from standing in one place for hours. You had to be alert yet relaxed, conscious, yet uninvolved. No matter how much you wanted to you couldn't let your mind wander too far.

Over the years she had learned all these skills and had mastered them. Her eyelids fell in a slow blink. Her mind drifted for a quarter of second in the darkness of her eye lids. To the dark face of a young man, with beautiful blue eyes, who struck out at the strong to save the weak. Even a poor servant girl. Then her eyes opened and she was back in the hallway, staying out of the way and waiting for Madame Wang's next command. Waiting for her eyes to close again, and the handsome vision to return.

.

Madame Wang paced by the door. She hated that door. It was an insult to her, and all the love she had for the little girl who was her responsibility. It was a symbol of her shame and failure.

She would have to go down to the servant's hall and wait for Butler Hong to rise. The other servants would smile and whisper about her failure, her newest failure. But she could see no other way. The door was locked and she had not been informed and her key no longer worked.

Out of frustration she grabbed the door handle one last time, and to her shock, she felt it move under her hand. Before it had been frozen, as if all the various parts of the latch had been welded together, but now it moved and she felt/heard the click as the door opened to her.

The servant pushed the door open with authority and walked into the room. One of the advantages of having a blind girl as her charge was that Toph's rooms were always well lit with glow crystals. Even at night when the nobleman's daughter was asleep.

Madam Wang moved to the bathroom door, turning back to see the servant girl closing the outer door and then scurrying to hang the new cane from its hook on the wall.

Seeing that everything was now back to normal, the governess, with only a slight hesitation, placed her hand on the door handle and felt the mechanism shift as it should. She opened the door, and moved through the bathroom to the bedroom door. She found this one unlocked as well, and opening it quietly she stepped into the room.

There on the bed was her beautiful little girl. The woman felt her throat close and her eyes burn with joyful tears at the sight. For month after month she had made this pilgrimage and the bed had been empty. Her delicate little flower gone. But now everything was as it should be and her world was safe again.

She silently crossed the room and sat in the chair next to the bed where she would watch and wait for the sun to rise.

Poor girl quietly closed the door behind her and took up her place by it, near but not touching the wall, and stood out of the way and waited. Waited for her eyes to blink, waited for another quarter second of beautiful blue eyes and smiling lips to appear on the inside of her eyelids.

XXXX

Sokka was awake and full of energy after what Toph had told him. He ran around the garden for a while, jumping up in the air and trying to use the gymnastic skills that Ty Lee had tried to teach him. He ran leaping up onto benches and doing front and back flips off of them, while trying to maintain his momentum as he ran.

Finally tired and panting from all the running and leaping, he just stood in the garden and stared up at the moon high in the western sky. It was just a little shy of a quarter full. The young man stood and stared up into the sky for a time.

"I hope you can forgive me." He finally said to the cool white sliver in the sky.

He stood and stared, the sweat turning cold on his skin. It was fall and the garden had lost its blooms. The color now just shades of green and brown as the breeze caused the last few leaves to fall from the trees.

"I don't know." He finally said. "I went after you and you pushed me away. I don't mean like pushed… but yeah… I mean being betrothed and all… but I really loved you. I still love you."

"Suki… Well Suki came after me and I felt like I had to love her back. It seemed only fair. If someone loves you, you should love them back, right? But now… now we just don't seem to fit right… like were two stones that are just grinding against each other, wearing each other down. Maybe I was trying to love her, instead of just loving her. I mean… I still love her… I don't know… Maybe I never really… no… I don't know…"

His head dropped and he stared at the grass for a time. Finally he looked up into the sky again.

"I really love Toph. I mean really love her. It's weird… I don't love you any less… It's just that I love Toph. It's like she makes my heart bigger somehow. Like loving her makes it easier for me to love more. I can love her and you and Gran Gran, and dad, and Katara, and everyone. I just really love her."

"Maybe…" He said thinking aloud. "Maybe the more you love the more you can love. I don't love you any the less it's just that I really love Toph and she loves me back. Maybe if I had never loved you, I wouldn't be able to love her. I'll always be grateful to you for that, letting me love you, letting me love."

He looked back at the earthbender's balcony and smiled. Then he turned once again to the night sky with a sheepish little smile on his face.

"I'm jealous of Aang." He confessed. "He told me how he got to see you and talk to you that time he was out on the ocean. I was a little hurt too when he told me. I mean you came to him but you've never come to me, except for that time in the swamp, and from what I understand that wasn't really you, just the swamp playing with my head. I know he's the Avatar and he can talk to spirits and stuff and I can't. So… Yeah… I'm jealous of Aang."

"Well it's getting late." He told the moon. "Or early really, should be starting my day. Talk to you later."

With that, the young man walked into the miniature library. He returned a few seconds later with his sword and began to practice his forms under the moon light in the dark garden.

.

Toph had fallen back asleep while lying in the bed, and was in the middle of a dream when Madame Wang pulled the covers off of her, and announced,

"The sun is up mistress! You will not be some spoiled little girl who sleeps the day away."

Toph's eyes shot open and her heart began to race. The old routine, with years and years of re-enforcement caused her mind to race. She had been dreaming of Aang and Katara and Sokka, back in their time together during the war. Now she feared that it had all been a dream. That the months of freedom and adventure and love, were just a dream.

She pushed herself up in the bed, unable to breath.

She felt something slid and tap against her throat. She reached up with her right hand and found the jade coin pendant that Sokka had given her. She took a breath. Her hand moved to her left bicep and found the space earth armlet. It had not been a dream. She sighed in relief.

"Up!" Madame Wang commanded, irritated that the girl had yet to get out of the bed. "You have a busy day ahead of you and the sun has already risen. We need to get you out of that... peasant's robe, cleaned up, and into some proper clothing."

Toph felt the cold hard fingers of the governess on her wrist pulling her hand away from the armlet, and her body from the bed. She tried to pull free but the woman just clamped down harder till it was painful. Finally she was dragged from the bed. The girl's resistance only irritated the older woman more as she pulled the earthbender from the bed.

The blind girl's feet hit the carpeted floor. She sent her bending out and recognized Madame Wang holding onto her, and felt Poor Girl over by the bathroom door.

The governess began to undress the twelve year old, none too gently. She pulled the water tribe top off of the girl. Now that the woman had the robe in her hand she realized it was some sort of thin animal hide. It made her skin crawl to be in contact with it.

"Girl!" Madame Wang commanded, as she threw the robe at the younger servant standing by the door. "Don't just stand there. Make the bed! And then get rid of that!"

"And what is this Thing on your arm?" The governess demanded of the blind girl, grabbing for the armlet. "You are the daughter of the House of Bei Fong, not some wild savage that wears old bits of iron, and animal skins."

Toph tried to pull her arm away, which only infuriated the older woman even more. The Governess pulled the armlet off of the girl and threw it on the night stand.

"I don't know what you and that wild beast have been doing for the last months…" Madame Wang proclaimed as she began to pull the girl's loin cloth down. "But it is going to stop right now.

Toph felt cold hands on her loin cloth pulling at it, tearing it off.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Toph shouted lashing out at the governess and shoving the woman away, with both hands.

Taken by surprise Madame Wang stumbled back losing her footing and falling to her knees. The older woman felt the floor under the carpet role beneath her.

Poor Girl who had begun to make the bed stopped, and tried to remain on her feet as the floor shifted.

The Governess looked up, fury in her eyes. She watched as Toph swept her right arm up, and the black metal armband flew from the table into the girl's hand, then the earthbender pushed the circle onto her upper left arm.

The woman struggled to her feet, using the wall to support her. The only sound being the metallic clicks of the ornaments dangling from her long hair pins.

Toph stood nearly naked and shivering in the cold room. The small girl forced the vomit rising in her throat back down into her roiling stomach. Terror, hurt and anger raged within her.

"How DARE you!" The woman cried. "I'll teach you not to strike your mother, you spoiled little bitch!"

Madame Wang advanced on the girl, her right hand raised and ready to strike. But Toph shifted her stance and swept her hands forward. The floor under the governess rolled again, throwing her off her feet and against the wall, causing lights to dance in her vision and her knees to give way as she slumped to the floor again.

"Now listen to me you little cunt!" Toph said in a tight breathy voice, pointing at the Governess. "By Oma and Shu if you ever touch me again, I will bury you so deep that they will need badger/moles just to find the body."

"I will decide what I wear, what I do, and who I do it with!" The blind girl went on, her voice growing stronger. "You are never to enter my bedroom again without my permission. Now get out of my room, before I do something that I will not regret in the least!"

"Wait till your Father hears about this." Madame Wang said, the venom evident in her voice as she pulled herself painfully to her feet.

"I'm sure he will be very interested when I tell him all about it." Toph replied. "Now get out!"

Madame Wang gave a short nod of a bow and left the room, the silk of her robe sounding like a heavy rain on a cold night, the metallic clack of the hair pins adding a quiet counterpoint.

Toph stood shivering, not from the cold air but from the storm of emotion running through her. The floor even seemed to be rolling though she was no longer using her bending to move it. The room spun around her. She had to struggle to keep from being sick.

_I would have killed her!_ She realized, but she didn't know why.

The knowledge sent another wave of nausea through her already shaking body. She bent over fighting the need to vomit, wrapping her arms around herself to hold herself together.

The blind girl started as she felt something touch her shoulders. It was a bathrobe, soft and fuzzy and warm. She straightened grabbing at the cloth.

"Are you alright mistress?" Poor Girl asked, wrapping the robe about her.

The young servant had stayed behind more out of surprise than anything else. Madame Wang had not made any sign to the young servant, nor had the governess given any command when she had left the room, so Poor Girl had just stood there.

It took a moment for the thirteen year old to come to her senses. Then she saw the blind girl standing cold, naked and alone shivering on the far side of the room. The servant grabbed the bathrobe from the hanger, and rushed to the younger girl.

"Fine!" Toph answered pulling the robe on.

"Can I get you anything?" The servant asked.

"No." The blind girl replied, closing the robe.

Toph realized as she cinched the robe closed that she was covered in a layer of cold sweat and was still shivering. What she wanted was Sokka to be here, so he could hold her in his strong arms, to have his warm body against hers, warming and calming her.

"Is there any hot water?" She asked the servant.

Toph had never really cared for taking baths, until her last one. That hot bath with Sokka there helping her, had changed her attitude. If she couldn't have her boyfriend, well at least she could have the hot bath.

"Oh yes mistress." Poor Girl answered. "But it is a little different now. They just installed a new way of washing yourself."

.

Toph stood under the streams of hot water as they poured down onto the back of her neck and her shoulders, willing her muscles to relax.

_A Rain Bath!_ She smiled.

It was smaller than the one they had in Ba Sing Se, but in every other way it was the same. Poor Girl had told her it was new, having only been installed last week along with a number of others in the big house. Toph didn't really care. She just let the fall of hot water pound the emotions from her body.

This was good, not as good as having Sokka there holding her, but still good.

The thought of her boyfriend eased the tension inside her even more. She wrapped her arms around herself and raised her head, the hot water spilling off of her shoulders and now down her chest and stomach covering all of her in the wonderful heat.

_That would be better._ She thought wickedly, as blood moved up into her cheeks heating them even more.

Yes if Sokka was here with her, their two bodies slick with water and soap, his long arms around her, his chest against hers, his lips on her own.

"Hmmmm… Sokkaaaa…" Toph hummed.

"Mistress?" Poor Girl called from the bathroom, where she had been laying out towels and the robe.

"Nothing!" Toph answered, blushing furiously.

The earthbender returned to actually washing herself.

.

"Nothing fits!" Toph complained the frustration evident in her tone.

"I'm sorry mistress." Poor Girl apologized.

The servant had laid out sets of clothes for the young girl as she had seen Madame Wang do hundreds of times, but as Toph tried each item on it was evident that everything was too small, from the underclothes to the outer robe and pants. It had been nearly a year since Toph had worn any of these clothes, and obviously it had been a year with a lot of changes.

"Where's my pack?" Toph finally asked in frustration.

She was standing there naked which she hated.

"I put it and the rest of your things under the bed." Poor Girl answered. "Madame Wang ordered me to get them out of the way."

Toph used her bending to shoot her bags out from under the bed and up against the wall where she could get at them.

"Just leave them here from now on." The earthbender commanded, opening the backpack.

Toph pulled a set of underclothes out and tossed them onto the bed. Poor Girl unrolled the bundle and separated out the individual items in preparation to putting them on the younger girl.

"Oh dear!" The servant exclaimed looking at the under shorts, then at the breast wrapper. "These have been torn and repaired. And whoever did it did not do a very good job. These really should be thrown away Mistress. Do you have any others?"

"Fine." Toph said pulling out a second bundle and tossing it on the bed.

"But save those." The twelve year old said, indicating the first items. "I want to keep them."

"Yes Mistress." Poor Girl answered bowing.

The servant rolled up the first set and handed it back to her mistress, who returned it to the backpack. The second bundle was a set Toph had bought at the fair, and was much more acceptable to the servant.

Toph felt much better in her underclothes, even if the under tunic and shorts were a little smaller than she liked them, but that was the new style according to the shop girl she had bought them from. The only outfit she had, that she was willing to wear today at least, was the one she had on yesterday. Poor Girl pulled the clothes from the dirty clothes hamper and helped her mistress put them on.

"This belt is so heavy, mistress." The servant commented as she carried it from the wardrobe. "Do you want me to look for another one that is lighter?"

The earthbender felt a cold shiver run up her spine.

"I like that one." She told the older girl pulling the belt on.

Poor Girl secured the belt at the back.

Toph nervously fingered the coins in their pouches inside the belt for a few seconds.

"If you…" The blind girl haltingly began but then took a breath and went on. "If you ever need any money just ask me for it."

"Mistress?" The servant asked, surprised and confused.

"I have lots of money." Toph explained. "So if you ever need any just ask me for it."

"Oh no, mistress. Madame Wang would whip me bloody if I ever asked you for anything." The servant explained to the smaller girl.

"She is never to touch you ever again!" The daughter of the Grand Duke commanded, turning toward the older girl.

"What can I do, mistress?" Poor Girl asked. "I'm a servant here, I have to do what I am told. I have no choice."

"I'll think of something." Toph reassured the older girl. "Don't worry."

* * *

Toph entered the dining room followed by Madame Wang and Poor Girl. Her parents were already seated at the table. Sokka, who had been standing uncomfortably by the table moved to her and gave her a hug,

"Sleep well?" He asked, giving her a little kiss.

_Why is he asking me that?_ Toph wondered for a second, after all they had slept together last night. Then she realized, and thought, _Good one Meathead._

"Fine." She answered. "And you?"

"Fine." He replied, as he escorted her to her chair by the table.

Before she could sit she was met by her father who had nearly knocked his chair over as he stood.

"Toph, it is so good to see you this morning." He told her giving her an awkward hug and a little kiss on the cheek.

"I wish I could say the same." She replied with a little laugh and an answering kiss.

"I'm so sorry." Lao said, his face falling into an embarrassed frown.

"It's ok father." She told him with a laugh, as she gave him a little punch to the shoulder.

The Grand Duke rubbed his arm and stepped away from his daughter, a look of concern overtaking the frown on his face.

"Meathead is always forgetting that I can't see, aren't you stupid?"

"All the time, your grace." Sokka answered. "She makes it too easy to forget."

"Yeah, but I still love him." Toph said, giving her boyfriend a much harder punch.

"And I'm glad you do." The young man told her, pulling out her chair.

Toph sat down. Lao returned to his own chair, still rubbing his shoulder, but now with a small smile on his face.

"You wore that yesterday." Poppy said in an unhappy voice from her end of the table.

"Yes mother." Toph replied. "It's the only thing I have that fits."

This last was not exactly true but she did not think her mother would appreciate any of the other outfits she had bought at the fair.

"Well whose fault is that?" The Grand Duchess remarked in an irritated tone while sipping her tea.

The other three people at the table turned to the Grand Duchess at her statement, but no one made a comment.

"At least we can have Weimin make you some everyday clothes now that you are home." Poppy told her daughter. "And he can design something for you as well." She added looking to Sokka.

"Thank you, your grace." The young man replied, bowing his head to the woman. "When you have to carry everything on your back you tend to leave your best clothes at home. My sister will be bringing the rest of my things with her on Appa when she and Aang come down for the party."

"Yes of course." Lao said. "When traveling on your own, without servant's, you have to strip yourself of all the superfluous things you have taken for granted. It must be very liberating, returning to just the essentials like that."

"Yes your grace." Sokka affirmed. "Though when you have to wash yourself and your clothes in a cold mountain stream, I'm not sure liberating is the first word that comes to mind."

"Servants!" Toph exclaimed.

The three other diners looked in surprise at the outburst.

"I was just thinking…" The earthbender told her father in a more normal tone. "…that I should have my own servant, like you and mother do."

"You have Madame Wang." Her mother pointed out, a little irritation entering her voice.

"I think she means a personal servant." Sokka added, he had an idea of what his girlfriend was really after. "You mean someone close to your own age, who would answer only to you, and could help you through the day."

"Yes." Toph agreed.

"After all…" Sokka went on. "…Madame Wang is her governess, and as such her duties are to educate and instruct not to act as a servant."

"Exactly!" The blind girl said, smiling at her boyfriend.

"Do you mean like a lady's maid?" Lao asked.

"Yes, a lady's maid." Toph jumped on the idea.

She wasn't sure what a lady's maid was but she knew her mother had one, and it sounded good.

"Like that girl that helps Madame Wang." Sokka suggested. "She would already know what was required of her and could step right into the job."

"She would be perfect!" Toph exclaimed, clapping her hands, and smiling at her young man.

Sokka smiled back at her. He felt a little guilty, since the two of them were pulling a scam on her parents, at least it felt like a scam, but that smile from Toph was more than worth any guilt he might feel.

"I don't know…" Poppy said from the end of the table. "Toph is a little young to have a lady's maid. And I don't want to upset the household."

"Well Toph is turning thirteen, wouldn't she be considered a young woman at that age?" Sokka commentated.

"Please father, can't I have a lady's maid." Toph begged.

Sokka had never seen Toph use puppy eyes to get her way before and he had to admit she was very good at it to his surprise.

"It could be an early birthday present." The tribesman suggested.

"I don't know." Poppy said, looking to her husband.

"I still remember the first employee I hired." Sokka mused, stroking his chin.

As he was doing it he realized that the whole chin stroking was a little too much, but he had already started so he was committed to the gesture and continued with it.

"It was a very maturing experience…" He continued. "Knowing that you are responsible for someone's work and income. I have to say it changed me for the better."

This last was not just part of the scam, it was true, hiring an employee had been a sobering experience for the young tribesman.

"It is her birthday in just a couple of days." Lao told his wife.

Except for his own valet, servants and the household were Poppy's concern, and he rarely interfered with her on these decisions.

"Well…" Poppy began.

"Please mother?" Toph begged.

"How old were you, your grace when you got your first lady's maid?" Sokka asked.

"Oh all right." Poppy finally relented.

"Thank you so much, mother." Toph said, in all sincerity. "And you too father."

With this last the blind girl rose from her chair, rushed over and kissed the Grand Duke on the cheek, which caused the older man's cheeks to gain color and a large grin to come to his mouth.

As Toph returned to her chair she decided that she would have to punch Sokka really hard when she got the chance for all his help. Then tonight, she would stick her tongue into his mouth. This last thought sent a little hot thrill through her, as she sat down.

Sokka was just returning to his food, when he felt a pair of eyes on him. He looked up to see Madame Wang staring at him. Her face wore the usual harsh expression that she normally showed to the world. But her eyes were filled to overflowing with hate. Specifically hate for him. He just smiled back at her, raising one eyebrow jauntily. After all he had faced down Azula during the Day of Black Sun. He was not going to be intimidated by some governess.

Of course Azula had been secured to the wall by Toph's bending, and the princess was unable to bend fire, because of the eclipse. Even so he had still stared eye to eye with her on that day, for a few seconds. So he held Madam Wang's eye now, until the governess was the first to look away.

* * *

Toph was standing in her mother's sitting room, where the Grand Duchess had dragged her after breakfast. The blind bender had forgone the offered chair so she could keep her feet on the ground which allowed her to sense the room and her parent as the noble woman paced anxiously up and down the small space.

She felt the door open and Madame Wang step in.

"Master Weimin has arrived, your grace." The governess announced.

The bender noticed that Madame Wang stepped in and whispered something to the Grand Duchess. Her mother looked at the servant, who nodded in confirmation. Poppy stalked quickly to her daughter, bent down and pulled up Toph's pant leg.

"Oma and Shu!" The woman exclaimed.

"What?" Toph asked pulling her leg away from the grabbing claw.

"Toph! You're covered in… hair!" Her mother exclaimed.

"Oh crap!" The young girl cursed.

She had forgotten to shave this morning, well for the last two or three months really.

"Young lady you are a complete disaster!" Poppy accused. "That wild man may like you covered in fur, but you will not appear in public naked looking like this."

"?!Naked?!" Toph nearly shouted.

"They have to measure you for your new outfits, and they can't do that with your clothes on!" The Grand Duchess explained, grabbing onto her daughter's arm. "Madame Wang, inform Miss Gao that we have an emergency and to get everything ready. We will meet her in the Spa."

"You!" Poppy said pointing to Poor Girl with her free hand. "Tell that Water Tribe barbarian to meet Master Weimin in the audience chamber immediately. That will keep him busy while we try to turn my daughter back into a human being."

"Yes your grace." The servant girl said bowing and running down the hallway.

"Toph, you are such a disappointment to me." Poppy scolded her daughter as she dragged the young girl off to the spa by the arm.

* * *

Sokka followed Grand Duke Lao into the library. While his host took his seat behind his desk the tribesman went to the hawk as it moved from side to side restlessly on its perch. The teen had brought a small bowl from the breakfast table with bits of meat for the bird, and fed the raptor now from his fingers. Sokka crooned and squawked at the bird who answered in kind.

"It sounds like you two are having a conversation." The Grand Duke commented looking up from the work on his desk.

The younger man just smiled, stroking the birds head, and then dumping the last of the meat in the food bowl attached to the perch.

"Hawky and I are friends, your grace." The teen told his host.

"I believe you are." The noble replied with a smile, going back to his work.

Sokka sat down at the long table and looked at the stack of mail still waiting for him. He had taken care of all the business letters he had received yesterday, and had even gotten through most of the political scrolls.

Zuko wanted him back in the Fire Nation to help him with the military, the Fire Lord wanted his blue eyes and big ears back.

Iroh wanted him to go on a "Tea Buying" expedition in the western Earth Kingdom, between the Fire Colonies and the territory controlled by the Earth Army (Which to Sokka sounded like a job for the Black Lotus).

Bumi wanted his help in Omashu with the "Tinky Tumbles" and "Rolly Gnolies" left from the war. The young tribesman had no idea what the mad king was talking, well writing, about.

Chief Arnook wanted him to return to the North Pole, the chief wouldn't tell him what he was needed for, but Arnook insisted that it was important, so important that the Chief of the Northern Tribe had sent a delegation down to bring him back with them.

Aang wanted him back in Ba Sing Se. The Avatar was worried about the Ruling Council and their plans to take over the kingdom if Kuei did not return, or perhaps more importantly even if the king did return.

Even Gran Gran needed him. She wanted him to return to the South Pole with the Water Tribe Fleet. She was having problems with the Northerners who had come down to help the Southern Tribe, but apparently they were now causing more trouble than they were helping.

Sokka looked at the pile of scrolls and sighed. During the war he had gone and done what he had wanted. Yes he was helping Aang and all that, but the teen had really felt free for the first and last time in his life.

Now everyone he knew had something for him to do. He was convinced it was because he was the least important person they all knew. He was the only normal, non-bending guy around. He was sure that Toph and Katara were not getting requests like this. They were too busy doing important bending type things, which left all the little dirty jobs of making the peace up to "Mr. Normal".

What he really wanted was to hang out with Toph, maybe travel some more and have some fun with his girlfriend. After a couple of years of adventures, maybe he could go to the University in Ba Sing Se, he would like that. Then he and Toph could settle down somewhere in the Earth Kingdom and get married and make babies, lots of babies. He better talk to Toph about the babies thing. He made a note in his book.

Sokka grabbed the next letter in the pile, recognized it, and like the last five times he had grabbed it he put it back in the pile. He had been avoiding that particular letter since last night. It was from Suki and he just didn't have the courage to read it yet. The only problem was that he was running out of other letters to read.

He looked at the next letter and saw that it was from Ty Lee. He was about to break the seal when the door to the library opened and Hong and another servant walked in. The butler had a stack of scrolls in his arms, the younger servant behind him, was carrying two wooden trays with more scrolls in the top one.

Hong walked to the Grand Duke's desk and deposited the letters in a tray.

"The morning mail, your grace." The butler intoned.

"Thank you, Hong." Lao replied with a nod.

The servant then led his small procession to the table occupied by the tribesman. Sokka stood and bowed, and received a deeper bow from both servants in reply. The younger servant placed the two trays on the table. Sokka noticed that the one containing the scrolls was marked "IN" and the empty one had "OUT" written on it.

"You may place any mail you wish to have sent out in this tray, sir." The butler explained pointing to the one marked OUT. "And any new mail we receive for you will be placed in this tray."

With this last the older man indicated the tray containing the small number of scrolls.

"Thank you, Hong." Sokka said, bowing to the man.

"And allow me to introduce Shen, my lord." The butler said indicating the young man with him, who bowed to the tribesman at the mention of his name. "I have asked him to look after you while you are with us."

"Thank you, but I don't want to be any trouble for you." Sokka replied with a bow.

"It will be my honor, your highness." Shen explained, bowing.

"I don't actually have any title." The tribesman told the servant.

"You should address our guest simply as 'sir'" Hong explained to the younger servant.

"Yes Master Hong." Shen replied to the rebuke from the butler with a bow.

"Young sir." Hong now addressed Sokka with a bow. "With your permission I would like to make some changes to your accommodations in the hopes of making you more comfortable. I took the liberty of checking them this morning and found them quite rustic."

"Whatever you want would be fine with me." Sokka told the servant.

"Is there anything that young Shen could do for you at this time?" The Butler inquired.

"No, thank you." Sokka answered with a bow. "Everything is perfect."

"In that case, with your permission, we will take our leave of you, sir." The Butler informed him with a bow, Shen following suit. "If you need anything please don't hesitate to ring."

With this last Hong pointed to the bell pull by the desk.

"Thank you, Butler Hong." Sokka bowed. "I will not hesitate in the least."

There was more bowing and the two servants eventually left. Sokka sat down with a quiet sigh.

"Servants can be a burden." The Grand Duke said with a chuckle. "But I'm sure there are a hundred things that Hong does for me every day that I am unaware of but that make my life better and easier."

"No doubt, your grace." Sokka responded with a smile.

.

Toph lay on the cold marble slab that was the massage table of her mother's bathroom, sorry spa. The room was the size of Toph's entire suite of rooms put together. She had been stripped to her loin cloth and breast wrap by Poppy's servant women, and she was shivering slightly on the cold stone slab. Well at least she could use her bending on the stone.

She felt the women moving purposely about the room and could smell the wax heating on a burner set on a small table by the foot of the slab she was on. She had only had to go through this "waxing" a couple of times before she had run off with the Gaang. As she remembered it was not a lot of fun. It made her wish she had shaved that morning.

"Everything, your grace?" A servant asked.

"All of it, arms, legs, everything." Poppy told the woman.

Toph felt cold hands begin to pull at her loin cloth. She just clutched the sides of the slab and grit her teeth. Protesting would be pointless.

.

The blind girl let her mind wander back to Ba Sing Se to distract herself. It was a morning when Mai was still with them. All of the girls sharing one bedroom. Mai was in a dressing gown, sitting in front of a small mirror plucking her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers. Suki and Katara were partially dressed and Ty lee had just come in from the bathroom.

The acrobat pulled off her robe and stood naked deciding what she should wear that day. Ty Lee and Suki had no problem being naked in front of the other girls. To be truthful, Ty Lee didn't seem to mind being half naked in front of the boys either. Toph hated being naked in front of anyone.

"Ahhh… Ty… I've been meaning to ask you…" Katara reluctantly questioned the other girl. "…Why do you shave down… there too?"

"You mean here?" The acrobat asked, rubbing her lower abdomen.

"Well… yes, if you don't mind me asking?" The water bender answered.

"I don't know I just always have." Ty Lee answered with no trace of embarrassment. "Don't you?"

"No!" Katara replied in shock.

Suki gave a little snicker over in her corner.

"Why not?" Mai asked in her dour way, pulling a hair from her face. "It's hair after all, and no one sees it, you might as well get rid of it. If my parents wouldn't go crazy on me, I'd shave my head. Hair is such a pain."

All the girls knew that Mai shaved every day, though Toph thought it had more to do with the girl's desire to scrape her skin with really sharp blades. Mai had once sharpened Toph's razor for her and the edge was so keen that the blind girl had been afraid to use it afterward.

"Well…" Katara said defensively. "It's just that it took me fourteen years to grow that hair. I don't want to look like a ten year old again."

"Me neither." Suki agreed with a laugh. "Going through puberty once was bad enough. I can still remember how much it itched growing in the first time."

"So… Katara…" Mai said abandoning her mirror and turning to the tribeswoman. "I've always wondered about something, myself."

"Yes?" Katara asked with a little bit of trepidation entering her voice.

"Well to be honest, I've always been a little jealous that your boyfriend shaves his head. I can't wait till Zuko starts shaving up there again." Mai said with a small smile. "But I was curious does Aang shave everywhere?"

"How would I know?!" Katara answered flustered and embarrassed by the question.

"My question is... " Suki asked the knife thrower pointedly, coming to the water bender's aid. "... does your boyfriend?

Mai turned to the warrior and raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, he does." She answered with a smirk.

"What I want to know…" Ty Lee, who was still naked, asked bouncing on the balls of her feet. "…Does Sokka?"

"No!"

The answer was not unexpected though who gave it was. It was said simultaneously by both Katara and Suki.

Katara said it in an irritated tone, with her fists on her hips and a reproachful frown on her face.

Suki had said it in a more thoughtful tone with a small knowing smile on her lips.

Katara, her eyebrows rising up towards her hair, turned a shocked face to Suki, who responded with a single raised brow and the knowing smile turned into one of defiant smugness.

The performance of the two earned a quiet laugh from Mai, an excited giggle from the hopping Ty Lee, and an embarrassed head turn from Toph.

"Then maybe you two can tell me something else about cutie." Ty Lee said in her sly yet coy little girl voice.

"Don't worry!" Suki cut the younger girl off, turning on her angrily. "The way you keep bouncing those huge boobs of yours all over the house you'll get all the answers you need directly from 'Cutie' himself."

The acrobat stopped bouncing and her smile was replaced by a hurt angry frown.

"I don't bounce my boobs." She told the older girl, stomping her foot down for emphasis, which unfortunately caused her breasts to jiggle, she cross her arms over her chest to cover them.

Toph wasn't sure what the two girls were talking about, but she decided that now would be a good time to head off to the kitchen for breakfast.

"Alright, alright I think everyone should calm down." Katara said as the blind girl was heading for the door. "Ty Lee, put some clothes on, Suki, hurry and finish dressing we have to get breakfast started. Toph make sure the boys are up and ready, and Mai go back to… whatever it was you were doing."

"Anything you say Sugar Queen." The earthbender had answered while leaving the room.

.

Toph was brought back to the here and now by the feeling of warm wax being spread over the top of her right leg. Then she felt it on her left. There were two of her mother's women working on her. She was such a disaster, as her mother had pointed out.

The cloth followed and then the pain as it was ripped off. She gave a hiss to relieve the tension. Tui and La she had forgotten how much this hurt.

"Oh please!" Poppy scorned her daughter. "A woman's lot is nothing but pain. This is nothing compared to what you'll have to go through every month when your blood starts to flow."

"Oh please!" Toph mocked her mother. "I've already been through all that. I've given my gift to Tui, and worn my hair up. Oh and thanks for the warning on that! Luckily my boyfriend was there to explain it all to me, and all of Tui's other wonderful gifts to women."

The young girl gave another hiss of pain as another strip of hair was torn from her leg.

_Tooee!_ The Grand Duchess thought.

She knew the name. It was the name of the Water Tribe Moon Spirit. The spirit that was rumored to have come to the earth as a beautiful girl with white hair and become this Sakka's lover. Giving him strange powers.

And now this barbarian, this beast, had turned her own daughter into a worshiper of this pagan spirit. Turning her from her own true faith, into something foreign and evil. Poppy decided she had to do something, had to talk to someone, to save her daughter. There really was only one person who would be able to help her.

"Madame Wang, I need to speak to you privately." The Grand Duchess said motioning the governess over to her and away from the rest of the servants.

Toph gave another hiss of pain.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

* * *

Author's notes:

Hi All,

Yes another very late chapter and this is only the first part of it. I was really sick for about a month with a very nasty flu bug, I still have a lingering cough from it. Then a friend asked me to help him with a project he was doing, and that took another month. But that doesn't explain the last month. I just had a hard time getting my head back into the story and getting the words going again, and for that I apologize.

I hope you enjoyed what I have here. As I said above this is only the first part of the chapter. I was already over 9,000 words with a long way to go, so instead of waiting for the rest I decided to start putting out the chapter in parts. I hope to have the next part out faster.

Thanks so much for reading.

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New FanART; Sicksketch has done some wonderful sketches over on Tumblr. Please take a look, just search under the tag "ill walk you home" and you will find them.

Fanart; There is fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

I'd like to thank all the guest reviewers for their criticism and support. I really am trying to get better at this and need all the help I can get.

To tokka lover; Thank you very much, I will try.

to bvbarmy; Hi Sha, Thank you very much. Hope you like this next chapter.

to fan2099; sorry for the long delay, but here it , we'll have to see what Poppy get's up to but not quite yet.

to Kat; Thank you very much.

To That Other Guy; Thank you, I'll try.

To Guest; Yeah... sorry about that, but when you look at a page and you see the characters names at the start of every paragraph I get a little crazy. I hope I'm doing better in these most recent chapters.

To Lillian; Thank you very much, I'm glad you are enjoying it. Your English is amazing, I would never have the courage to try and write in another language. Well, we'll just have to see what happens.

To Abby; Sorry for the long delay, and thank for the generous words.

xx

Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


	55. Chapter 55

I'll Walk You Home pt. 55

Chapter 19 pt.2

Letters

* * *

Sokka had just pulled Ty Lee's letter out for a second time when the door to the library flew open and an out of breath Poor Girl came scampering up to the table.

"They… need you… in the… audience… chamber… sir." She panted out to the tribesman.

Sokka stood and bowed to the servant in reply.

"Please excuse me your grace." He bowed to Lao still at his desk. "It appears that I am needed."

"Of course." The Grand Duke replied with a rueful smile.

At the sound of the nobleman's voice Poor Girl suddenly realized where she was. This was his grace's library. Only Butler Hong was allowed to enter here freely. All other servants had to have a specific task and the butler's permission to be here. She had barged in without thinking.

The thirteen year old used all her considerable skills at being out of the way to try and disappear.

"Thank you, your grace." The young man bowed to his host.

"Better you than me." Lao said looking up from his work. "They probably want to measure you for your party clothes. I had to go through all that last week."

"Oh Joy!" Sokka said without any enthusiasm.

Lao gave a little laugh at the younger man's sarcasm. Then his eyes fixed on poor girl as she stood by the table.

"You're the young girl who works with Madame Wang, aren't you?" The Grand Duke asked the servant.

Poor Girl froze. She didn't know what to do. She tried to shrink farther into herself. She had never been addressed by the Grand Duke before. She began to shiver in freight. She had barged into the great personage's sanctum, nearly shouting, and then had ignored him, so intent was she on her mission. Perhaps he would have her executed. At the very least she would be severely beaten.

She tried to respond but her throat had clamped shut in freight, and no sound would come out. All she could do was bow as low as she could. She thought about actually falling to her knees and kow towing to the Grand Duke. But her knees were shaking so badly she knew she would never be able to get up again, if she did.

She felt a gentle touch to her elbow, straightening her up. As she stood she snuck a quick look to see the young man who was now at her side, smiling reassuringly at her. Her heart leapt in her chest for a different reason now.

"Yes your grace." She heard the deep voice of the handsome young man say.

Poor girl felt the touch on her elbow move up to her shoulder, and gently guide her forward to the desk occupied by the Grand Duke. The contact sent a warm shiver through her.

"Or actually…" Sokka continued. "… I should say no, your grace. Since she is now Toph's…"

He had to think a moment to remember the phrase that the Grand Duke had used at breakfast, then he had it.

"Toph's lady's maid."

"Ah, yes I thought so." Lao agreed from his desk.

_Lady's Maid_. Poor girl thought. _Me?_ She of course had heard the discussion of the high born at breakfast, but she had never associated what they were saying to herself. She had expected they were talking about hiring someone new.

"I'll have Butler Hong go over your new duties and responsibilities with you." The Grand Duke went on. "And also your new circumstances, salary, and living arrangements, and such."

Poor girl didn't know what to say. This was all so new and frightening. She had no idea what the great man meant by salary, she had never been paid in her life, and as for living arrangements, she slept on a pallet in her mother's room. She fell back on the servants' timeless response.

"Yes your grace."

Agreeing was always the best course.

"Please forgive me." Lao requested as he looked poor girl in the eye. "But I don't remember your name."

"Of course your grace." The servant replied with a deep bow.

It was quiet for a few moments.

"I think his grace wants to know your name." Sokka finally said nudging the girl in the arm.

"My name?!" Poor girl asked.

_My Name?!_ The girl thought. No one had ever asked her for her name before. She had a name, she was sure of that, she just wasn't sure what it was. No one had used it, not even herself for… well she could not remember a time when her name had been spoken aloud. She had always been called girl for as far back as she could remember.

"Liling!" She finally blurted out. "Your grace."

She was pretty sure that was her name.

"Ah… Well Miss Liling…" The way the Grand Duke said the phrase he made it sound like a title. "You now have a very important position in this house. A position of great confidence and trust. As you know my daughter is blind and it will be your responsibility to make sure that she is dressed properly and appropriately for any occasions."

"Yes your grace." Poor girl said with a deep bow.

"But it is more than just that." The father looked into the servant's eyes. "Being a Lady's maid, means that you will be privy to your mistress's personal thoughts. My daughter will tell you things that you must never repeat to anyone. You will be her confidant, the person she can tell anything to, and receive an honest reply. You must never forget that."

"I won't your grace." The servant answered in as serious a tone as Lao had used with her, giving him a formal bow.

"I'm sure you won't." The Grand Duke said with a warm smile.

"Your grace." Sokka suddenly spoke up. "Also as Toph's personal servant that means she would only take orders from her mistress, isn't that correct?"

"Oh yes of course." Lao answered. "Butler Hong or Madame Chen might ask you to help them at times but you would only take orders from my daughter."

"So if Madame Wang, or even your grace were to command Miss Liling…" Sokka gave a small bow to the girl on the use of her new title. "… She would have the right to refuse, is that not correct?"

Lao thought a moment but then nodded in agreement.

"Yes, she is Toph's servant now, and no one else's." The Grand Duke finally agreed.

"I understand your grace." Poor girl said with a bow.

"Good, that's settled." The nobleman said and with a nasty little smile he added. "Now you should take our guest to whatever his name is and have him sacrificed to the spirits of fashion and society."

"I was hoping you had forgotten about that your grace." The tribesman said with his own rueful smile.

"Oh yes your grace." Poor Girl said with a bow remembering the reason she had come in the first place.

"After you, Miss Liling." Sokka said with a small bow to the girl.

"Thank you sir." The servant replied with an answering bow, leading the young man from the room.

.

Master Weimin stood in the audience chamber and waited.

He realized this was a bad sign. If someone as desperate to be the leader in fashion as the Grand Duchess was, was making a designer of his status wait, this could be the beginning of his decline.

It was that bastard Deming's fault. The young up and coming designer with all his silly new "Peace Fashions". Weimin had even heard rumors that Deming's new collection was going to feature the new "Water Tribe" look that was sweeping Ba Sing Se's underground scene. His contacts had written to tell him that all the teens were copying it and it would soon be everywhere.

_Water Tribe!_ The designer thought. _That little shit Deming knows as much about the Water Tribe as I do!_

Which the designer had to admit was absolutely nothing. This party was going to be the party of the year in Gaoling. He had to pull this off, make a real statement or he would be finished as the top designer. And there was nothing so useless, as a fashion designer in decline.

If he had another near disaster like Baroness's Xu's party where half the guests were in Deming's less is more creations, Master Weimin did not think he would survive till his spring collection.

_Maybe I should just storm out!_ He thought.

Making a scene would enhance his reputation as an artist, if nothing else, and it would get him out of this ridiculous situation. Dressing a girl who had the audacity to grow, as the Grand Duchess's messenger had informed him, since the last time he had gotten measurements from her. And now with only three days left before the party he had to redo everything.

Yes, storming out might be his best option.

The designer and his three female assistants turned at the sound of the door opening. It was a servant girl entering and holding the door open with a bow.

"Master Weimin! " Poor Girl announced. "May I present Master Sokka of the Water Tribe, who will be the escort to Mistress Toph."

"Water Tribe?" His first assistant, named Huifen, asked.

"Tasty…" His second assistant, Huiqing whispered.

"Yum, yum!" His third, Meixiu, growled.

"Hmmmm…" Weimin hummed.

The young man was handsome enough, a little thin, for the designer's taste, he liked his young men with more muscles. But he could work with this. The dark skin and the blue eyes were exotic, and the odd hair style, the sides of the head close cropped, and the top pulled back into a long high pony tail were new and strange. The clothing in various shades of blue with worn white trim helped the look. And all the weapons hanging from the belt definitely gave the young man a barbaric look.

_Yes…!_ Weimin smiled. _"I'll shove the Water Tribe Look right up Deming's ass."_

"Off! Off!" The designer commanded waving his arms before him. "I have to see what I have to work with."

The three women ran forward and began to eagerly undress the surprised young man.

With an epic struggle Sokka was just able to retain possession of his pants, but that was all. Soon he found himself standing barefoot and shirtless, on a small wooden platform, more of a box really, in the middle of the room. Two of the women were running cloth measuring tapes up and around him, calling out numbers to the third woman, who wrote them down in a small book. The young Water Tribe entrepreneur was happy to note that it was an NAT dry pen and note book.

Poor girl observed the entire operation with complete fascination and a small blush on her cheeks.

The sound of a quiet cough behind her, surprised her, and she spun around to see who had entered the room without her noticing.

"Butler Hong!" She said giving a quick low bow.

"Miss… Liling." The butler replied with his own small bow. "And I am sure you know Miss Cuifen, her grace's Lady's Maid."

"Miss Cuifen." Poor Girl said bowing to the well-dressed woman.

"Miss Liling." The woman in her thirties replied with her own much smaller bow.

"His grace has informed me of your new position in the household." The butler went on. "And has asked me to explain your new circumstances and duties to you."

"Whoa! Hey!" The young tribesman cried, from atop the wooden stand.

"I have to get your inseam." A woman's voice replied.

"Perhaps it would be better if we continued this in the hall where we will have more privacy." Hong suggested, indicating the door.

"HEY! She just measured that!" The three heard the young man call out as they left the room.

"That was for the right leg, I'm measuring the left." A sultry woman's voice could be heard replying just as the butler closed the door behind them.

.

"Miss Liling, I took the liberty of asking Miss Cuifen's help in this matter once his Grace explained your new position in the household." Hong told Poor Girl once they were in the hallway. "As her Grace's Lady's Maid she knows far more about your new duties than I do, and she has graciously offered her assistance to you."

"Thank you Miss Cuifen." Poor Girl said giving a low bow to the woman who answered with a condescending nod.

"As to your new circumstances…" The butler went on. "From now on you will take your meals with the rest of the staff in the servants' hall downstairs. You will sit across from Miss Cuifen. Please be prompt."

"Yes, Butler Hong." Poor Girl answered with a low bow.

She knew where the servants' hall was, but had never sat at the long table with the rest of the staff. The young mistress until very recently had always taken her meals in her room and Poor Girl had always been given a small portion by Madame Wang after the meal was over.

"As to living arrangements…" Hong began, returning the bow. "As you are aware we are rather cramped with all the extra staff brought on for the party, but Miss Cuifen…" The butler bowed to the woman at the mention of her name. "Has generously offered to share her own room with you until after the party and more permanent arrangements can be made. I will have a cot brought in and you can move your things this afternoon."

Liling bowed again to the older woman, who returned the bow with a somewhat stern look in her eye. Poor girl was used to sleeping on a palate on the floor of her mother's room, so sharing a room would be no hardship for her.

"As Miss Bei Fong's Lady's Maid, you will get one afternoon off each week, at your mistresses convenience of course." The butler continued.

"Of course." Poor Girl agreed with a bow.

She had never had any time off in her life so the idea of having time during the day when she could do whatever she wanted had her wondering what she would do during that time.

"And finally you will be paid one and one half gold pieces each month starting from today." Hong told her.

Poor girl had never been paid, had never had any or ever used any money in her life. She had heard people talk about money, and she knew that gold was very valuable but that was about all she did know.

"Speaking of her salary…" Miss Cuifen added. "Perhaps it would be possible for Miss Liling to get a small advance on this first month's pay, to enable her to get some new clothes more fitting to her new role in the household. Also she will be helping Miss Bei Fong dress at the party and will need something appropriate for such a public occasion."

"Hmmm…" The butler thought for a moment. "Yes, I'm sure that can be arranged. I'll have the funds drawn by this afternoon."

"Thank you." Poor girl said with a bow, after a look from her grace's lady's maid.

"Well now that that is all settled, I will leave you in the most capable hands of Miss Cuifen, who can explain your new duties to you." Butler Hong said with a small bow to the two women and before they could rise from their answering bows had already turned and was striding swiftly yet decorously down the hall.

Poor girl turned to the older servant, who was giving her a stern look in reply.

"First…" Miss Cuifen said holding up a finger. "You're bowing too much and too low. You're not a servant girl anymore but a Lady's Maid. I haven't spent the last fifteen years establishing my place in this house to have you come along and destroy all my hard work."

"Yes, Miss Cuifen." Poor Girl said with a bow.

"You will only initiate a bow to those above you. All the maids and footmen will bow to you first and you will answer. Is that understood?"

"Yes Miss Cuifen."

"To myself and Madame Wang you will bow here." The older servant said holding out her hand to indicate the height of the bow. "To Madame Chen, the Housekeeper, here, to Butler Hong, here, to Miss Bei Fong here, to her grace here, and to the Grand Duke here."

"Yes Miss Cuifen." Poor Girl answered, bowing to the height she had been instructed to use.

"Oh yes…" Her Grace's Lady's Maid said thoughtfully. "There is also Miss Wu, the Grand Duchess' Secretary. She is neither a servant nor is she a guest in this house. She has no authority over any of us, but she often communicates instructions from her grace, and should be shown proper respect. You will bow to her here."

"Yes, Miss Cuifen."

"Very good." The older woman complimented her with a small bow of her own. "You learn quickly, don't forget it."

"I won't, Miss Cuifen." The younger woman responded with only a small nod this time, even though it felt very wrong and disrespectful.

"Next, you are a Lady's Maid now, even if your mistress does not have a title yet, technically she is the first born of a noble family, and if the stories of her intimate association with his majesty during the war are true, it won't be long before she has a title all her own. Never forget that you represent her and you must never bring dishonor, scandal, or worst of all, derision on her."

"Yes Miss Cuifen." Poor Girl answered seriously with a proper bow.

"You will only take orders from your mistress, her grace and myself. Is that clear?"

"Forgive me…" Poor Girl answered apologetically with a bow. "But his grace the Grand Duke instructed me that I was only to take orders from Miss Bei Fong herself."

That earned a dark look from the older servant.

"Well…" The woman finally said to the young girl. "If those are his grace's instructions then there is nothing else to be said on the matter."

"I will give you a list of shops where you can get some proper clothes." Cuifen told her, moving on to the next topic. "Tell them that I sent you, and of your new position and they will be able to dress you appropriately."

"Thank you, you are most generous." Poor Girl responded, genuinely grateful.

"Now…" The older woman said in such a serious tone that Poor Girl knew that they had come to the most important topic of all. "What do know about hair?"

"Hair, miss?" Liling asked in return.

"I thought as much!" Miss Cuifen answered defeated. "Well I'll teach you what I can in the time we have, but don't worry I'll do your mistress' hair for the party as well as her grace's. But don't forget you will owe me."

"Oh I won't forget." Poor Girl said with a proper bow.

"And if you do ever forget, don't worry, I'll be sure to remind you." The older servant said in a most serious tone.

.

Sokka was desperately holding onto the waist of his pants, while the two young women with the tape measures were industriously trying to pull the same waist band down.

"You don't need to measure that!" The young man decreed.

"We've measured everything else." Right side said through gritted teeth, while tugging with all her might.

"You want your pants to fit, don't you?" Left side grunted pulling just as hard on her side.

Just then a servant opened the door and announced,

"The Grand Duchess will see you now in her sitting room."

The young girl then exited the room and closed the door, but not before the occupants, who were frozen by her entrance, heard her giggling laugh.

Sokka found himself stumbling back out of the way as the wooden box was pulled out from under him, and the three women and one man grabbed up their various books drawings and sacks of material and rushed out the door. He breathed a sigh, got his clothes back on and made his escape to the quiet of the library.

.

Toph stood in her loin cloth and breast wrap, feeling grateful that she had been allowed to keep even this modicum of clothing, on the wooden box just recently pulled out from under her boyfriend. Being cut off from her element she had very little sense of what exactly was going on around her. She felt the cold hands on her skin, which was still stinging and warm from the depilation. And she felt the tape measures slithering across her skin, and heard the two women calling out numbers to the third.

As one of the women passed a tape around her chest, she heard the number called out, and more importantly, the tone in the woman's voice. The woman was obviously disappointed with the number.

"_Yeah!_" Toph thought. "_No tits! _

_"Don't worry mother." _She reassured the Grand Duchess in her mind_. "There are plenty of men who will pay extra for no tits and no hair._"

_Where did that come from? _ The small bender asked herself.

It was crowded in the smallish room. Poor Girl was standing out of the way speaking quietly with Miss Cuifen; Miss Wu was standing near the Grand Duchess making notes in a book. Miss Gao and two of her spa girls were standing near the inner door in case they were needed, plus there was Weimin and his three helpers. The room was starting to get hot and close and Toph was starting to feel a little woozy standing on the box.

The measuring went on and on. They measured everything. They even measured her fingers and toes, and even to the tip of her nose. Finally Weimin declared that they were finished and the designer and his crew began to pack up their things.

Toph felt a gentle hand on her arm as someone helped her down off of the small wooden stand. Once her bare feet hit the stone floor she breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. Using her bending she felt that it was Poor Girl by her side helping her to a couch by the wall. The servant then helped the bender get dressed, which was an even greater relief, even if it meant she had to dress in front of all these people.

"I'll have everything ready for the final fitting for all four of you the day after tomorrow." The designer declared as they headed for the door.

Miss Gao and the spa servants were dismissed.

As Toph finished getting dressed Poppy came over and handed her daughter a pair of very thick wooden wedges with silk cords attached to them.

"Here, put these on." The Grand Duchess told her.

"What are they?" Toph asked, fumbling with them.

"They're shoes of course." Poppy told her with an edge to her voice. "You will be dancing in a pair like that so you will need to get used to them, especially with the dance practice this afternoon."

The blind girl gave a groan and sat down to put the clunky things on.

.

Sokka pulled Ty Lee's letter towards him and finally broke the seal on the scroll. As he unrolled it he noticed how elegant the calligraphy was. He was also fascinated by the little illustrations on the page.

"Dear Dreamy." The letter began, Sokka noticed that the character for Dreamy had little hearts drawn around it.

"You wrote me a letter! No one has ever written me a letter before. That is so nice! You really are a real Sweetie! Wow, your trip sounds a lot more fun than ours, what with battles with sea serpents and all."

Sokka had written her describing the fights in the Serpents Pass. It sounded that she had written after receiving his first letter. He had not included the trouble in the desert. The second letter had the fight in the restaurant and the faire and the Travelers.

"I would love to see a real sea serpent. We have not seen the Unagi yet but I hope we will soon."

"Our trip was not as exciting as yours. Once we got to the train station we walked to the harbor to board our ship."

...

The two Kyoshi Warriors walked down from the train station, Ty Lee struggling under the bulky weight of her two large duffels, though within only a few strides of the station two young men had volunteered to carry them for her, and the acrobat had sweetly accepted.

"You're so strong!" The young woman had remarked feeling the biceps of the young men was they walked along.

Suki snorted at Ty Lee's antics. Only Ty could be walking along heavily armed and in full armor with every bit of skin covered and still exude sex as if it were a fog streaming off of the young woman.

A third young man had offered to take Suki's small duffle bag, but she had politely refused the offer, and when the young man had insisted and unwisely reached for the strap on her shoulder, she grabbed his hand, twisting it into a wrist lock that drove the fellow onto the ground where he begged to be forgiven and released.

The rest of the trip to the docks was uneventful and fairly quick.

"Fire Navy!" One of the young men observed, when he saw the ship the two women were going toward.

"Yes!" Ty Lee said brightly. "They're taking us to Kyoshi Island. We're Kyoshi Warriors."

She said this last with a little hop into a very fierce pose, that seemed cuter then it was fierce.

"Can't say I've ever heard of Kyoshi Warriors before." The other young man commented. "But if they all look like you two, I hope to meet a lot of them in the future."

"That'd be fun!" The acrobat replied.

Suki just snorted again.

The two young men were turned away at the gang plank, but two Fire Navy sailors on the ship were more than happy to help the young woman with her baggage and even led them to the stateroom the two would share on the trip. Ty Lee thanked them and sent them on their way.

"I'll take the top bunk." She told Suki. "I love bunk beds!"

"Fine!" The commander replied.

…

"The trip on the boat was not very fun." Sokka read. "Poor Suki was sea sick every morning. But all the sailors and especially the officers were really nice to us."

….

Ty Lee stood out on the bow of the ship leaning back on the railing and looking up at the rigging of the cranes. It was a supply ship and had extensive cranes and cables to load and unload the cargo. She was thinking that it would be fun to run around on the cables, high above the deck.

She was in her pink two piece outfit. It was her favorite since it was pink and girly looking. It showed off her breasts nicely, which she felt were her best feature, even though her gymnastics coach had told her she would never get very far in competition because her chest was too big.

It also showed off her stomach and small waist, which she worked very hard to keep looking good but not too muscular. That was the problem with her arms and legs and she usually kept them covered. Because of all her training they were muscular and boyish. They were the reason she preferred to wear pink. So she would look girly.

"Pammy! What are you doing on board?"

Ty Lee looked to the cute young officer that had just addressed her. She hadn't noticed his approach because she had been staring up at the rigging.

"Hi cutie!" She answered leaning back on the railing a little more and pushing her chest out

"This is such a wonderful surprise." The young man said stepping in and placing his hand on her waist.

"Hello!?" The acrobat asked moving away from the hand.

"Pammy? What? I thought at Patel's party we had a connection." The officer replied moving in closer.

"I'm not Pammy!" Ty Lee said poking the boy in the chest with a surprisingly strong finger. "Oh….! You probably met my sister Pam Lee."

"But you look just like Pammy." The young man said looking confused.

"Well yes… but I'm Ty Lee." She explained.

The young man studied her face for a moment, then a look of understanding flashed across his face.

"Oh… Forgive me." The officer said with a bow. "I meant no disrespect my lady."

"Oh that's ok." She told him with a sad little laugh. "It happens all the time."

"Well if you will excuse me I have to return to my duties, my lady." The officer said with a second low bow.

"Oh sure." Ty Lee answered returning the bow.

The young man turned and walked quickly back to the main superstructure of the ship. The young woman turned and looked out over the bow, relaxing her stomach muscles, but tensing her glutes as she bent over the railing.

….

"The Capitan was especially nice." The letter went on. "Though he told me some things about how mean the Fire Navy was to the Kyoshiians."

….

"My lady?"

Ty Lee turned at this new voice. This was an older man, in his thirties probably. She had seen him before up on the bridge when the ship had pulled out from the pier the day before.

"Hi." She said with a little wave.

"I'm Commander Xu, captain of the Boarkipine Tusk." The officer said with a bow.

Ty Lee answered with a bow of her own and a furrowed brow. She knew the name of the ship so that made sense but she was confused by the man calling himself both a Commander and a Captain.

"I had no idea that one of our passengers was from such an exalted family. Please accept the offer of my own cabin in place of the small stateroom you are now in." The Captain told her.

"Oh no… Please, we're fine where we are." The acrobat told him. "And please can we keep my family connections quiet. It's so much easier if I'm just a Kyoshi Warrior returning to the islands."

Ty Lee had been trying to escape from her family for over a year now.

"About that, my Lady…" The officer said looking embarrassed. "You may not find the islands very welcoming for you."

"Why not?" She asked.

"Well, my lady." The Captain explained. "After the disaster at the North Pole when the Avatar destroyed the Grand Northern Fleet, the Fire Navy was desperate to try to restore our honor and show our worth to the Fire Lord."

"The Army had such great success in expanding the colonies and the capture of Omashu, as well as prosecuting the siege of Ba Sing Se, that we in the navy needed something to justify our need to rebuild."

"The Kyoshi Islands became the obvious choice, since they had no navy. A plan was devised to work up to an invasion and conquest of the islands. The Islanders had always relied on their Sea Serpent to protect them. So Phase one of the plan was to neutralize the beast."

"The few Capital Ships we had…" The Captain saw the confused look on his passenger's face, so he explained what he meant. "Large battle ships. They used their trebuchets, large stone throwers, to shoot large quantities of poison into the main harbor of the large island."

"We hoped this would have two effects. The first would be to kill or weaken the serpent by either poisoning it, or at the least killing its main food source, the giant koi. The second effect would be to force the Kyoshi fishing boats to go out to sea to maintain their catches."

"We knew that the Islanders relied on fish as a main source of food. Their fishing boats were small wind or oar powered vessels, and on the open sea they were easy prey for our small fast patrol ships. We soon captured or killed the crews and sank all the fishing boats."

"Once that was done we moved on to Phase Two. These were raids on the coastal villages and towns, much as the Southern Raiders did against the Southern Water Tribe. We actually landed troops and burned all the settlements along the coast. This drove the people inland, many of them injured, to strain the resources of the islands even further."

"Fortunately for the islanders the new Fire Lord ended operations before we moved on to the invasion Phase of the plan. I'm telling you all this to let you know that the islanders suffered greatly, and are still suffering due to the actions of the Fire Nation."

"It will be months before all the prisoners are returned, and it will be years before the coastal settlements and the fishing fleet is rebuilt. During those years the people will suffer famine and overcrowding which has already led to disease and even more deaths although the war is over."

"The Islanders' anger towards the Fire Nation is real and passionate. They will not let our ships, not even our civilian ships, land at their ports. If they find out that you are a daughter of one of the great families of the Fire Nation… I will fear for your safety, even your life."

….

"By the time we got to the island we were happy to get off the boat." The letter had a little drawing of an island in the distance. "Although when we got ashore it might have been better if we had stayed on the boat."

….

Ty Lee sat in the forward section of the small launch as it moved across the dark bay. The only sounds were the hiss of the boiler, the murmurs of the crew, the chug and clanking of the engine. She looked over the side at the grey cloudy waters. Nothing moved in them. The large bay was lifeless.

A groan from Suki, sitting on the bench ahead of her made her look up. They were both in their Kyoshi Warrior Uniforms. Even covered in the thick face paint, Ty Lee could see that her commander was not well. Suki had thrown up over the side once already during the trip into the village.

The acrobat looked toward the fast approaching shore. The white sand ending in lifeless burned out forest. The black sticks of charred trees standing stark against the mountain in the distance.

"Prepare to beach!" The officer in charge of the launch ordered.

The sailors began to move, the tempo of the engine slowed, and the hiss of steam increased.

Ty Lee could see the village now. It was small, only a collection of rude shacks made mostly from charred pieces of the houses that had once stood there. She could see people, their clothes covered in soot and dirt, until it was all a dark grey, moving, working, slowly to clear away the last of the burnt out homes.

The only color was the group of people in dark green waiting on the beach. It was the rest of the warriors who had arrived a few days earlier. Their uniforms and face paint standing out on the white sterile sand, as they stood in a semicircle waiting for the boat to land.

The acrobat jumped at the piercing shriek of the launches whistle. The sailors moved to their positions. The boat slowed even more. The people on the shore stopped their work and looked to the beach. There was a hiss and a lurch as the bow ran up onto the sand.

Suki jumped onto the beach and was caught by the waiting warriors. Ty Lee followed. A sailor handed over the duffels, which were taken up by three of the warriors. There was another blast on the whistle and the launch was backing away, pulling out into the bay.

The group in green walked up through the burnt out village.

"Don't worry everyone. Our great commander has finally returned to protect us." A villager called out to the warriors. "Too bad there is nothing left to protect!"

"Did you find all the glory you were looking for chasing after the Avatar?" Another called out.

"Chasing after her boyfriend you mean." A nearby young woman's voice added in an undertone.

Ty Lee looked to see who had said this last, she felt sure it was one of the warriors walking with her, but she couldn't be sure.

"Are you happy now?!" A woman called out from the crowd forming around the warriors. "You left and brought the Fire Nation down on us. My husband is gone but you're here!"

"Where's my mother?!" A young boy called out. "She's buried up on the hill! That's where! She got sick and died! But you're back!"

"And my son?!" An older woman asked. "Taken prisoner and yet to return! But they let you go!"

Ty Lee looked over the villagers for signs of trouble. The faces were angry, but also sad and grey, their eyes and cheeks sunken.

The warriors made a protective circle around their leader as the procession continued up the road. More people stopped what they were doing and came to join the crowd, anything was better than the mind numbing labor of cleaning up the burned out buildings.

As they moved up the hill deeper into the village the crowd grew and the calls to the leader more ugly.

"Because of you I have lost my home, my husband and two sons!" An older woman called out, shaking her fist at Suki.

The rest of the crowd shouted support for the woman. More fists were raised. Ty Lee singled the woman out as the first she would take down if it came to blows, which would be very soon.

"What's all this?!" An older man called out. "What's all the noise about?!"

An old man, his clothes too large for his shrunken frame, pushed his way through the crowd.

"Suki!" He called out in welcome when he saw the leader of the warriors. "Thank Kyoshi you have finally returned!"

The old man bowed to the warrior woman.

"Elder Oyaji!" Suki said in greeting, returning the bow. "I am glad to be back."

"Word of how you saved half the Earth Kingdom from fiery obliteration and destroyed the Fire Nation Air Fleet has reached us here." He said in a loud voice, more to the crowd than the warrior. "Let me offer my congratulations. Now when we receive aid from the Earth Kingdom it will be in repayment for your actions not as charity."

This small speech of the Elder had mollified the crowd of villagers. The resentment faded and an embarrassed silence took its place.

"Well…" Oyaji voice filled the void. "We all have work to do, best get back to it."

The crowd broke up with the villagers returning to the tasks they had left. With a gesture the Elder beckoned Suki to walk with him up through the village.

"We are having a council meeting tomorrow morning where my house used to be." Oyaji told her as they walked.

"I will be there Elder." Suki replied.

"Good! We all have much work to do. The earlier we start, the earlier we will be finished." The old man said.

"Oh NO!" Suki cried as they reached the end of the village.

"Yes, the statue to Avatar Kyoshi had to be cut down." Oyaji told her.

Ty Lee could see the base but no statue, just a charred wooden pillar on the ground nearby.

"But we will make a new and better one." The Elder consoled the warrior. "Just as we will build a bigger and better Dojo someday.

Suki's breath caught in her throat at these words. Finally she was able to respond.

"Yes Elder." She agreed.

Oyaji left them there and returned to the burnt out wreck of his once large house. The warriors proceeded up into the hills. Finally the group came to the end of the path. Ty Lee looked ahead and saw the burnt out remains of a building. Black charred timbers in a jumbled pile. Of the forest around the structure, there was nothing left but the blackened trunks of burnt trees sticking up against the grey soil.

The rest of the teenagers stopped, but Suki continued on, clambering over and through the burnt out mess that had once been her centuries old home and training center. Where she had been inducted into the ancient order she was now the leader of.

Finally when she reached the middle of what had once been the dojo she dropped to her knees and wept.

After a minute or so Akemi, the second in command made her way into the wreckage and stood by her leader. She placed a hand on Suki's shoulder and told her.

"It's alright. Just like the Elder said, we'll build a bigger and better Dojo. We can start in the morning."

"No!" Suki answered sharply. "Just the same, it will be just the same as it has been for centuries!"

The teenager wiped the tears from her face, smearing her white makeup with the black soot from her gloved hands as she stood.

"And we won't start in the morning!" She told her subordinate. "We'll start right now!"

"Kyoshi Warriors!" She called to her command. "Fall in, we have work to do!"

….

"Dreamy, you're smart, like 'Zula." Ty lee's letter asked. "Why do people have to be so mean to each other? I don't understand it. Why can't they be nice? That would be so much better."

Sokka wasn't sure if he liked being compared to the crazy fire princess, but he wished he had an answer for Ty's question.

"Well anyway…" The letter went on. "…Thanks again so much for your letter. I just loved it. If you could I would love to get another one, and if you write me I'll write you back and we could have a whole letter thing. Wouldn't that be fun?!"

The character for fun had little stars drawn around it.

"Yours truly, Ty Lee" The letter concluded, with a little sketch of the acrobat smiling and waving.

Sokka smiled as he rolled up the scroll. He pulled a piece of paper from the blank pile and began to write his reply.

.

"Mother, I'm not wearing them!" Toph insisted as she entered the dining room for lunch.

The 'them' were the heavy wedge shaped shoes being carried by Poor Girl who was rushing to keep up with the irate earthbender.

"Toph, you must wear them, the look of the outfit is based on those shoes. You cannot go barefoot!" Poppy declared following her daughter and the servant into the room.

Sokka looked expectantly to the Grand Duke who was standing at the head of the table. The two men had arrived a few minutes before Toph made her entrance.

The noble stood for a moment returning the tribesman's look and then realized the significance of it. Lao was the head of the household and as such he was the one to resolve any problems between his wife and his daughter. With a sigh the older man entered into the disagreement.

"Why can't you wear them Toph dear?"

"They hurt!" She answered bluntly.

"Oh as if that was a reason for a woman not to wear something." Her mother scoffed.

"Just look at them." Poor Girl held up the offending items for the Grand Duke to examine.

"They do seem a bit extreme." Lao observed.

"Nonsense!" Poppy declared. "They are very fashionable, and will make Toph look much taller."

"They make me feel like I'm sliding downhill, cramming my toes into the end!" the bender retorted. "I can hardly walk in them let alone dance."

"Toph sees with her bending." Lao heard a low voice whisper by his side, startled he turned to see Sokka had approached him during the discussion. "She can't bend with those on, it would be like you or I trying to dance blindfolded."

"Really?" The Grand Duke asked in his own whisper.

He was answered by a nod from the young man. Lao had never realized how his daughter used her bending.

"What about slippers?" Sokka asked the young woman. "You could still use your bending; if you could get by in your snow boots you should have no problem with thin soled slippers."

"I'd rather be barefoot." Toph answered. "But… yes I suppose I could get by ok in slippers."

"Then why don't you wear the slippers." Lao suggested. "It would be much better for you to be comfortable, especially for the dancing."

"But I ordered those shoes especially." Poppy protested.

"I know dear." The Grand Duke commiserated. "But the slippers could be decorated with pearls and gem stones, with gold thread embroidery which would be very pretty."

"Well if everyone is against me I guess I have no choice." The Grand Duchess conceded with ill grace. "You can wear the slippers."

"Thank you mother." Toph said with a bow.

"And thank you father." She said walking up to him and giving him a hug.

"Excellent!" Lao said happily. "Now for some lunch, I'm starving."

"Me too." Sokka agreed.

"Meathead, you're always starving." Toph commented, though she flashed the tribesman a little smile along with the criticism.

Before the Grand Duke could ring, Butler Hong entered the dining room.

"Forgive me your Grace." The servant said bowing to the nobleman. "But the Baron and Baroness of Shanjia have just arrived, with family and attendants."

Poppy immediately brightened from her sour mood of a moment before at the news, Lao's mood, in compensation, seemed to sour in turn.

"Please show them in, and inform the kitchen that we will be having guests for lunch." The Grand Duke told the butler.

"Yes your grace." Hong, who had picked up on his master's mood, bowed and exited quickly.

"The Baroness is Poppy's sister." The Grand Duke explained to Sokka.

Soon the door opened again and Butler Hong stepped in.

"Your Graces…" The servant announced. "…May I present the Baron and Baroness of Shanjia with their daughter Jasmine and son Delun."

Sokka watched as a rather plump very well dressed man of average height, about forty came in, followed by a young girl around nine, then a boy around six, and finally a slim woman, also about forty and even more elegantly dressed than the man.

"Rose!" The Grand Duchess called.

"Poppy!" The second woman cried, dropping into a bow, but then rushing in to embrace her sister.

The two women hugged and then kissed each other on the cheeks.

"Your Grace." The man said with a bow to Lao.

"Baron." The Grand Duke answered with his own bow. "And may I present my daughter Toph."

"Well what a cute little thing." The Baron said, patting the young woman on the head. "I can see why you've been hiding her away all these years, she's such a sweet child."

Toph just growled and took a half step away from the man.

"And this is our guest Sokka, grandson of the chief of the Southern Water Tribe." Lao said indicating the young man.

"Water Tribe?" The Baron asked in horrified shock.

The tribesman bowed to the Baron in a polite manner. He noticed that the older man did not return the bow. Sokka watched as a number of emotions flashed across the man's face from surprise, to horror, and many other expressions but finally settling on a combination of mostly distaste with a healthy dose of hate on top.

Sokka had never seen anything like that look before and he was shocked by it. He didn't even know this man, yet apparently he was hated by him for no reason. It made no sense to the young man.

The tribesman caught of flicker of movement from the little girl and turning to look saw her whisper something to her brother who stared at Sokka as if the blue eyed teen had just grown a second set of eyes.

_Strange family!_ Sokka thought.

"Poppy…" Rose hissed as she pulled her sister away from the table. "He's not actually a wet is he?"

"I'm afraid so." The Grand Duchess whispered back, the embarrassment evident in her face.

"And you're letting him stay here, in your house?" The baroness hissed, horrified.

"Oh no, we have him out in a guest house in the garden." Poppy whispered in explanation.

"Thank Oma for that!" Her sister whispered in relief, but then she added in confusion. "Then what is he doing here?"

"Lao keeps inviting him to dine with us." The Grand Duchess answered defensively. "I've tried to explain it to his grace but he just refuses to understand."

"You mean he eats here, at your table?" The baroness asked, she was so overcome with shock at the revelation that her voice was nearly audible to the others in the room.

Poppy, so overcome with mortification, could only nod.

"I won't pretend to understand how you can allow your daughter to sit at the same table as a wet." Rose hissed vehemently to her sister. "But I will not subject my children to anything so insulting as sitting next to some animal and forcing them to pretend it is a human being!"

With this last the baroness turned to the Grand Duke and announced into the quiet that had descended on the room,

"We will be taking our meals in our rooms."

"Excellent idea, my dear." The Baron concurred.

"If you will excuse us?" He added bowing to the Grand Duke, who politely returned the bow, followed by Sokka and Toph.

"Hong please show the Baron and his family to their rooms." Lao said with undisguised abruptness.

The butler bowed and led the family from the dining room.

* * *

Katara walked up the road toward the street of the book sellers. She had left late that morning for the middle ring to do some shopping for the trip to Toph's party. She and Aang planned to leave tomorrow evening, and fly across the desert at night when it would be cooler, and then stop for a rest and nap the next morning before arriving at Gaoling in the early afternoon.

She had already gotten a pair of presents for Toph for her birthday, as well as some dried fruit and nuts to snack on during the trip. Now she was heading for the book sellers to find something to read on the trip. Riding in the saddle all alone was boring and you could only look at so much scenery.

It was lunch time and she was getting hungry. She decided to grab something after she got her new book.

As she began to look at the tables set out in front of the stalls she heard the whispers start up. She was not surprised. Thinking about seeing her brother again in a few days had made her homesick and she had worn her water tribe outfit today. Any time she went into the city dressed water tribe she always created more comment from the citizens.

"Look! It's the Waterbender." A young woman said pointing towards her.

Katara was used to such comments. It used to upset her until her brother had explained that in a city of millions who had never seen anyone from the tribes before, let alone a waterbender, for the citizens of Ba Sing Se it would be like one of the siblings finding a snow flower in the spring, something strange and wonderful. The people of the city might even think of them as good luck charms of sorts.

Since then Katara just tried to ignore the stares and the comments, though she always made an effort to look her best when she went out.

As she moved down the shops she saw ahead that the largest store had a gigantic display. It even had a large colorful banner over the entrance announcing,

"It's Here! The Dark Twins by Lee Loo Ling"

Under the banner was a table stacked high with new books. On the table were signs reading,

"Based on True Events!"

"How the Avatar was really brought back!"

"A Must Read!"

"Best Seller"

"How the War Really Ended!"

"It has everything, Romance, Adventure, Action, Water tribe Magic, and Water Tribe Passion!"

The tribeswoman walked towards the table. She had to admit that she was intrigued by the 'Water Tribe Magic', whatever that was, and the mention of her boyfriend the Avatar.

"Excuse me?"

Katara stopped and turned. It was a young woman about her own age bowing to her. She returned the bow.

"You're the Waterbender aren't you?" The girl asked.

"I'm a waterbender." Katara answered.

"Would you please sign my book for me?" The girl asked holding out an open copy of "The Dark Twins" and a dry pen.

Katara did not understand, but she saw no harm in it, so she signed the girl's book for her.

"Your brother's not with you, is he." The girl asked looking up and down the street.

"A… no he's with a friend in Gaoling." The waterbender explained.

"Oh…" The girl sighed with a little pout taking back the pen and the book. "It would have been perfect if I could have gotten his autograph too. Well maybe on the next book."

"Maybe." Katara agreed, still a little lost.

"Thank you!" The girl said with a bow. "Everyone at school will scream when I show them this."

Katara watched as the girl ran off to her friends who actually did scream a little when she showed them the waterbender's signature in the book.

The tribeswoman just shook her head and continued to the table full of books.

* * *

Sokka was back in the library, working on his correspondence, after the rather quiet lunch, when the door burst open and a husky young man, probably in his thirties, with a long thin black mustache matched by a long thin black beard growing from the center of his lower lip, in Earth Kingdom armor, came striding into the room.

"Your Grace!" Butler Hong said coming in after the officer, trying desperately to not look like he was chasing the younger man, but walking very fast for all that. "May I present Colonel the lord Rong Hu, who has just arrived."

"Thank you Hong." The Grand Duke said rising and moving to greet the soldier.

"Don't blame Hong, cousin Lao." Colonel Hu told his relative. "He wanted to do it right but I was too impatient."

"You always are Rong." The older man answered the younger.

The two bowed to each other then Rong Hu embraced the Grand Duke, who was obviously uncomfortable by the familiarity.

"And this is our guest Sokka." Lao said indicating the blued eyed teen. "he is a friend of our daughter, Toph."

"Sokka?" The colonel mused examining the young man. "Are you water tribe?"

"Southern Tribe." The teen answered.

Colonel Hu stared for a few moments, then he became very serious as he said,

"Sokka Water Tribe."

The young man placed his left hand on the hilt of his sword at his side.

"Are you Sokka of the day of the Black Sun?" The officer asked, in a quiet and intense voice, with a hard look in his eyes.

The tribesman moved his right hand to his left arm, taking a slow half step forward on his right foot, ready to draw Spring Rain in an instant.

"Yes I planned and towards the end led the invasion on the Day of Black Sun." The teen affirmed.

"Lao, do you know who you have under your roof?" Rong asked his cousin.

"Yes, and he is a friend of my daughter's and a guest in my house." The Grand Duke said with great dignity.

"Guest! Guest?!" The officer nearly shouted.

Lao stepped back at the vehemence of the exclamation.

"Cousin, this is Sokka of the Day of Black Sun! Sokka of the Boiling Rock! Sokka the Black Sword! Sokka of the Air Ship Slice! This is the young man who saved the Earth Kingdom and won the war!"

The colonel became more and more excited as he spoke until by the end he was nearly dancing.

"Well Avatar Aang…" Sokka began to explain.

"The Avatar, he was just finally doing his job, he should have done it a hundred years ago." Colonel Hu said.

"You don't know what it was like, Lao." The officer went on before Sokka could object. "There was half a million of us, a half a million, the largest army ever assembled. And the news was all bad. First Omashu had fallen, then the big one. Ba Sing Se, betrayed by those traitorous bastards the Dai Li, and just given to the Fire Nation. On top of that the Avatar who had finally returned had been killed in the takeover. When we lost Ba Sing Se, and the Avatar, we knew it was over. We had lost the war, a half a million of us, and we couldn't do a thing. Troops were deserting by the thousands every day. We had given up."

The frustration and sadness was evident in the soldier's voice and face as he told the story.

"And then there was the eclipse, and the next day we start hearing the story. About how this kid, just a teenager, not even a bender, and Water Tribe on top of that. But he's got guts and brains, and he hasn't given up." Rong's voice became thick with emotion. "No he hasn't given up, so what does he do? He scrapes together whatever he can and he does something no one in the history of the world has ever done before. He fucking invades the capital of the strongest nation in the world. He lands his force right on the doorstep of the Fire Lord himself, on the one day that he has a chance. The Day of Black Sun. And he's got the Avatar with him. Who's not dead, it was all part of the plan."

"And what does the most powerful leader in the world do, when this kid shows up with this tiny ragtag force. The mighty Ozai hides in a hole in the ground shitting his pants. Scared out of his mind! And if it wasn't for the Dai Li the kid would have had Ozai. If we ever get our hands on those cock suckers, we'll make them pay."

"I found out later that it was agents of the White Lotus that had spread the story. At the time we didn't know if it was true or not, but just the idea of it breathed new life into the army. A few days later we heard that Bumi, all by himself had kicked the Fire Nation out of Omashu.

"We started to move again. Desertions stopped. And we began to fight, and as we took prisoners we found out that the story was true. All of it. And the army swore an oath, all half million of us. That like that Water Tribe kid, who wasn't a bender, all he had was brains, guts, and the will to fight on no matter what, that we would never give up, we would fight on no matter the odds, that even if it took us another hundred years we would win this war!"

"You don't have a guest in your house cousin Lao." The colonel said in all sincerity, with tears in his eyes, and giving a low bow to the young man. "You have the man who saved an army, turned the tide, and won the war!"

* * *

It was late afternoon before Katara finally returned to the house in the upper ring. She put her purchases on the table in the main room. She couldn't believe she had bought a copy of that silly book. Well it would give her something light to read on the trip.

It was a few hours later after she had finished all she had to do, and was sitting down to enjoy a cup of tea when she heard a knock on the front door.

Upon opening the door she discovered that it was early evening outside, and there was a well-dressed young man at her door.

"Yes?" She asked the stranger.

The young man studied her face for a few seconds, which was at least a change for the attractive young woman; she was used to men looking at everything but her face.

"Forgive me for staring." The man said with a bow. "My name is Kang Ma, an employee of Grand Duke Lao Bei Fong, and I have been tasked with delivering this letter to Katara, sister to Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. I was just trying to identify you from the many portraits of you found in the popular press."

"So is it me?" Katara asked him.

"I believe so, but the artists have not done you justice." Kang replied with another small bow.

"How about this?" The waterbender asked, moving her hand fluidly through the air until a small drop of moisture hung from the tip of her finger.

Katara then flipped the drop into the air between the two of them, and with a breath froze it solid. She then, with a gesture, held it suspended in the air in front of the young man's face.

"Beautiful!" Kang exclaimed, holding out his hand.

The young woman let the ice drop fall into his hand, where he stared at it while it melted from the heat of his palm.

"Beautiful and talented, the stories about you are all true, Miss Katara." The young man bowed again, and as he rose up he held out a sealed scroll to the young woman.

"Thank you." Katara responded with her own little bow before taking the scroll.

"If there is a reply I would be happy to pick it up in the morning, if you would like." Kang told her with a smile.

"If there is I can just send it out with the normal mail, I wouldn't want to waste your time." She told him.

"Please it would be my pleasure to be at the service of someone as lovely and as unique as you are." He replied with a warm smile.

"Well… I guess it wouldn't hurt for you to check." She commented, giving a similar smile back to the young man in his turn.

Kang Ma bowed and left. This was the third and last scroll he had had to deliver this evening, and now he could return to his home in the middle ring. But he would be back in the morning. He didn't know if all the stories about Water Tribe women were true, but he now knew that at least some of them were, and he hoped he would find out about the rest soon.

* * *

Toph, barefoot, repeated the steps shown to her by the dancing master. They were very formal, precise and delicate. Not to mention boring and lifeless, which she actually did mention a number of times to her mother's horror, and the dancing master's anger.

The only good thing about learning the dance had been that she did not have a partner, so Meathead had not been subjected to the torture. The afternoon dragged on and on, until it felt like it would never end.

.

The afternoon passed quickly for Sokka. Lao had sent for tea and dumplings, and rice wine at Colonel Hu's request. And the three men had sat drinking, eating, and talking.

Sokka had insisted that Avatar Aang had been responsible for defeating the Fire Lord, and that it was Zuko that had ended the war when he became Fire Lord in his turn.

"Nonsense!" The colonel declared. "What choice did Zuko have? Our army was on the move again, and you had destroyed his air fleet, The war had turned thanks to you. He was smart to end it when he did."

"Ah yes, the Battle of the Air Fleet, I would like to hear more about that." The Grand Duke said, sipping his tea.

"Oh no!" Rong waved his hand at his cousin. "The story I want to hear is the one about the Boiling Rock."

"I haven't heard about this one." Lao observed. "What's The Boiling Rock?"

"Only the most secure prison in the entire Fire Nation, which means the world." Colonel Hu told the Grand Duke. "But they made a big mistake when they put our Water Tribe friend's girlfriend in it. So he infiltrates it and busts her out, the only escape from the Boiling Rock in history."

"Girlfriend?" Lao asked with a raised eyebrow to the young man.

"Yeah!" The officer crowed, laughing. "What was her name, Suka, Siko, or something. She was from Kyoshi."

"Her name was Suki." Sokka jumped in. "And I was trying to rescue my father, and Zuko helped. And we would have failed but Suki was there and she took the warden hostage. Plus Zuko's girlfriend sacrificed herself so we could escape."

"Girlfriend?!" Lao asked the young man, now with both eyebrows racing up his face.

"Ex-girlfriend!" Sokka amended. "We broke up, after the war."

_LIAR!_ Sokka the Great shouted inside the warriors head.

_We did break up; it's just that Suki doesn't know it yet._ The young man told his older self. But the guilt was still there.

"Oh so you dumped her!" Rong said, sipping more wine. "You know the Water Tribes, change their girlfriends with the seasons."

"No it wasn't like that at all." Sokka tried to explain.

"Hey, you don't have to tell us, right Lao." The officer said with a laugh, while nudging his cousin with his elbow. "We're men of the world. After all a great hero is not like the rest of us. He's had lots of girlfriends, like what's her name the Ice Princess. He melted her frozen heart and she killed herself over him."

"No!" Sokka nearly shouted. "Yue wasn't my girlfriend, and she sacrificed herself to save the world!"

"Sorry…" The officer said apologetically, with a small bow. "I didn't mean to make light of her sacrifice."

"So you've had two girlfriends before now?" Lao stated more than asked.

"More than that!" Rong answered for the young man. "What about the Fire Princess? They say she fell in love with you before she ever met you. You're the only man who's on her intellectual level, and the way you kept one step ahead of her in the war won her heart, even though she would never admit it."

"Azula?" Sokka cried out. "She's crazy! She tried to kill me, more than once?"

"Love and hate, two sides to the same coin." The colonel observed with a wink to Lao. "And what about those two friends of hers, the acrobat and the knife thrower? They say that both of them were sweet on you."

The Grand Duke took a long hard look at the young tribesman.

.

Sokka found that dinner was much livelier than lunch had been, but he also found that was not necessarily a good thing. Even though the Baron and Baroness of Shanjia and their two children, continued to take their meals in their rooms, which didn't bother Sokka in the least, Colonel Hu, who was apparently also a Baron, more than made up for their absence.

The Grand Duke had insisted that the Colonel use less colorful language around Poppy and his daughter, but that didn't stop the officer from talking, and talk he did, especially when he was introduced to Toph.

"So this is the little girl you've had hidden away all these years." The officer said bowing to the earthbender. "I see now why you kept her secret. She is so beautiful that even as a little baby she would have broken every man's heart that looked upon her."

"Oh please your excellency." Toph admonished him, as she bowed to him in turn. "You are far too generous in your praise."

Although she sounded disdainful of the complement the young earthbender could not hide the color that came to her cheeks, or the small smile that graced her lips.

Sokka also thought it was over the top. After all the guy was old enough to be Toph's father, or grandfather for that matter. Well maybe not grandfather but he was really old, at least thirty, and much too slick for Toph.

"Oh please forget that excellency and my lord sh…" The colonel was interrupted by a cough from the Grand Duke. "Ah… non sense! We're related, just call me Rong, everybody does. Even my subordinates. Which really pis… tics off General Wu that tight assed old bitch."

The officer laughed at this last, but then he turned and pointed across the table at the young tribesman.

"But even she gets all choked up and teary eyed when she hears the story about you and your ice princess."

"Ice Princess?" Toph asked.

"He means Princess Yue." Sokka explained.

"Oh, yeah that was really sad." Toph agreed, remembering the play they had gone to and the story of the Northern Princess.

"You know about his first girlfriend?" Lao asked his daughter.

"I know about all his girlfriends." Toph told her father.

"She wasn't my girlfriend, well not officially." Sokka tried to explain.

"Wait!..." Rong said pointing first to Sokka and then to Toph.

The colonel was getting more and more excited, until he was hopping up and down.

"You're Tophsokka!" He said it as one word. "I'm such and idiot, I should have known. But you don't expect to actually meet great heroes. It's like meeting Oma and Shu."

"What?!" Toph asked him.

"You're the Toph, from the stories." Rong explained now almost jumping in his excitement. "And the two of you are Tophsokka! This is so great! I can't believe it. You two are famous! The army loves you two.

"There are even these two battalions named after you. One is 'Toph's Troublemakers'. And they mean it. Great fighters but always causing problems in camp and tearing up bars and restaurants. Then there is the battalion of mostly women earthbenders called 'Sokka's Sweethearts', that are almost as bad. The 'Sweethearts' even carry long straight swords in honor of your reputation."

"And let me tell you when those two battalions are camped near each other you don't want to get between them." The Colonel went on.

"The two of them fight?" The Grand Duke asked.

"Among other things." The colonel answered with a smirk. "They have contests sometimes. Even though I'm assigned to headquarters I'm proud to say that they made me an honorary 'Troublemaker' and let me compete in one of the contests. Which was a little embarrassing since I didn't measure up very high, but when the 'Sweethearts' added their own contest to ours I have to say it was very satisfying."

"These contests what are they about?" Lao asked curious.

"There mostly based on the stories that circulate through the army about you two." The officer explained.

"About us?" Toph asked.

"Yeah! All the stories are about the two of you as a couple!" The colonel explained. "They have a bunch of different names for the two of you. Tophsokka is the one I like but there are others. I don't believe all of the stories. I mean most of them are probably made up, after all some of them are silly and then there are the really dirty ones."

"Dirty ones!?" Poppy asked scandalized.

"Well not really dirty, but well… you know… two young people in love… with… well you know… sex and everything. I mean soldiers making up stories about two young lovers what do you expect?" Rong tried to explain.

"Lovers?" Lao asked shocked.

"Lovers?" Toph asked embarrassed, but intrigued.

"Lovers?" Sokka asked feeling lost and confused.

"Well yeah!" Rong answered as if it was obvious.

"Dinner is served." Butler Hong announced.

Everyone took their seats at the table.

* * *

"Hi sweetie!" Aang called out as he put his staff/glider against the wall and closed the front door to the house.

"Hey sweetie!" Katara called back. "I'll be right there."

The Avatar stumbled over and collapsed on the couch. The waterbender came in to the front room and sat next to him. They shared a little kiss, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

"Sorry I'm so late again but the Ruling Council is just getting crazier and crazier. General Fong is just out of his mind." Aang told her, the exhaustion evident in his voice. "You may have to go to Toph's party by yourself. I don't think I'm going to be able to leave. If I do I think they'll take the chance to declare that the king is dead, and set themselves up as the hereditary rulers of the kingdom."

"I'll stay too." Katara told him, she tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice but was not entirely successful. "I wouldn't feel right leaving you here alone."

"I'll be fine." He told her in gratitude. "But I want you to go. I know you really miss your brother and it is Toph's birthday. At least one of us should be there. I've already arranged to move Appa up here in the morning. You and Iroh can go together."

"Is Iroh even going?" She asked. "He hasn't said anything to me about the party, and, as far as I can tell, he hasn't made any arrangements to leave."

"I would have thought he would have left already." He answered. "Maybe he's waiting for Zuko so they can go together. We should ask him when he gets home."

The two sat in silence for a few minutes. Katara slumped further down on couch so she could rest her head on the young Avatar's chest. It seemed she had to slump less and less each day. He was taller than she was now, only a little, but still enough for her to notice.

Suddenly she sat up and looked at him.

"I nearly forgot!" She told him as she reached into her robe.

It had been the telltale sound of the paper crinkling as she slumped that had reminded her.

"I got a letter from Sokka today, and it's just about what we were talking about."

She pulled the scroll from her robe and unfurled it.

"I had written him telling him about the problems you were having with the ruling council and he wrote me this in reply. During his travels down south he met Kuei. And he thinks the king may be returning to Ba Sing Se."

She pointed to a section in the letter and began to read.

"I'm not sure, but after the little talk we had I think he plans to return to the throne. Depending on how fast he travels he should be there in a week or so. I worry that some on the council may try to declare him an imposter and have him locked up or worse. Only the inner court has even seen his majesty so most people in the city won't recognize him."

"I think it would be a good idea if Aang was to meet him and declare him the true king. Everybody knows who the Avatar is, especially if he shows up on Appa. You have to admit that a ten ton flying shaggy monster wouldn't be missed by anyone in the city."

"If the Avatar acknowledges his legitimacy then the council would have to accept him or face a revolt of the entire population."

She handed the letter to her boyfriend so he could read it.

"That would go a long way to solve everything." Aang said grabbing the letter as if it were a life line during a storm at sea. "This is why I need Sokka here. He's great at dealing with people."

* * *

"I don't have any girlfriends!" Sokka insisted across the dinner table.

"Any?!" Toph asked pointedly.

"Well… I don't mean… Well of course you're my girlfriend!" The young man spluttered.

"And what about the Kyoshi girl?" Rong asked

"Well…." Sokka said avoiding eye contact with everyone at the table.

Toph was looking down at her plate even though she couldn't see it. They both felt their faces beginning to heat up.

"Suki is my ex-girlfriend. Toph is my current girlfriend. And that's it. No other girlfriends!" He finally declared.

"What about the acrobat?" The colonel asked, taking another drink of rice wine.

"Yes, what about the acrobat?" Lao asked.

"Yeah! What about Pinkletoes?" Toph asked.

"Hmmm?" Poppy asked from her end of the table.

"There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of stories about you and the acrobat." Rong told the table, refilling his cup.

"Ty Lee flirts with every guy she sees. We're friends that's all." Sokka insisted.

"I don't know…" The colonel mused. "The stories going around the army about you two are pretty graphic. All about her chi blocking and how flexible she is and especially about your enormous Water Tribe…"

Rong stopped suddenly realizing that he wasn't telling stories in a mess hall full of rough soldiers but at a noble's table in front of a family.

"Enormous Water Tribe what?" Poppy asked suspiciously.

"Enormous… Dark…" Rong thought desperately.

"Yes?" Lao asked

"Sword!" Rong finally answered.

"Oh yeah!" Toph said looking up. "His sword is really long. He let me play with it a few times during the war."

Rong laughed so hard at the comment that he fell out of his chair.

* * *

Iroh hurried through the front door into the main room of the house in the upper ring. The Avatar and the waterbender were sitting together on the couch after cleaning up from their dinner.

Before the old general could even close the door a furry blur streaked through the room and landed on his shoulder chittering hopefully. The old man often brought a treat or two from his tea shop for the lemur.

"I'm sorry little one, not tonight." Iroh told the beast.

Momo chittered unhappily and flew off out the garden window to search for more insects.

The old man walked over and dropped into his chair by the couch with a tired sigh.

"Forgive me for being so late but I had much to do this evening." He explained to his housemates.

"What's going on?" Aang asked concerned. "Is there a problem with the shop?"

"No, no!" The firebender replied reassuringly with a wave. "But I received a letter from your brother, young Katara, which explained many other reports I have been receiving lately."

"Oh White Lotus business." Aang observed sitting up.

"Sokka wrote me too." Katara said sitting up as well.

"Yes he mentioned that he had written you and one other as well." The retired general said with a dark twinkle in his amber eyes. "Your brother is a master player of the Great Game, young master waterbender."

"Sokka always liked Pai Sho." Aang observed.

This earned him a little rumbling laugh from the one time prince of the Fire Nation.

"Yes, but I had to scramble to get all the pieces in place for young Sokka's strategy to work." The old man said with a smile. "He really is a master, but he made one miscalculation, but either through karma, or fortune, or perhaps design he was able to adjust for it, and I have hopes he will have a great success."

"Is this about his maj…?" Katara began but was stopped by Iroh holding up his hand to silence her.

"Walls may have ears." The Dragon of the West explained in a quiet voice. "Let me just suggest that you, Young Avatar, even though it is rather late, might want to move your ten ton shaggy flying monster up to the house tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow. I think it might be a very busy morning for all of us."

* * *

Sokka was in his loin cloth, under the covers, sitting up in bed reading. It was an actual bed. Hong and (crap he couldn't remember the young man's name) must have set it up that morning. It was on the sleeping platform but it was a wood frame rope bed with a thick straw mattress, covered in real sheets and blankets and with real soft pillows.

The servant had also added a wooden door to the entry way, a wash stand, a mirror, and a wardrobe. They had also covered the windows with curtains to keep the cold wind out, and had added a bronze pagoda stove with a supply of wood and some spark rocks.

All in all the guest house was much more inviting thanks to all the work they had done, though Sokka thought it could have used a lot more animal pelts and hunting trophies, not to mention some snow to make him feel really at home.

"Is that a bed?" Toph asked as she walked into the room.

She was dressed for bed in his old Water Tribe top. It was late at night and she had checked to make sure she could leave her room unseen.

"Yeah!" Sokka answered putting his book down.

"I hate beds!" Toph proclaimed as she launched herself onto her boyfriend.

The bed creaked and groaned at the sudden addition.

"Yeah but it's soft." The young man said after he had caught her in a tight hug.

"I can't bend in a bed." She told him straddling him.

"I'll have it taken out tomorrow." He assured her.

"Good!" She told him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him.

The kissing went on for a few minutes after that, with some shifting and leg tangling. Finally they settled down with Toph resting her head on Sokka's chest, listening to his heart.

"I love you." She finally told him.

"I love you." He told her.

"Even if you don't have a girlfriend?" She asked in a scathing voice, poking him in the side.

"I explained all that." He said defensively. "And what was with Rong Hu? 'You're so beautiful even as a baby you would have broken hearts'. The guy's old enough to be your grandfather."

"He's not that old!" Toph insisted.

"Yes he is!" The young man insisted. "Too old to be flirting with you."

_Is Sokka jealous?_ Toph asked herself.

A little smile crept across her face.

"Well he is really nice." She told her boyfriend. "And I bet he's really handsome. I've never met him but mother says he's always got a new girlfriend and will never settle down. But maybe I could change that."

"He'll never change!" Sokka insisted with some vehemence. "You can tell he's a total flirt and womanizer. You should stay away from him."

"Oh yes sir!" Toph responded.

"Sorry." He told her chagrinned. "But he just seems like one of those guys who, well fools around a lot. And I don't want you to get hurt is all."

"I can take care of myself." She told him, hiding her grin. "Why was he laughing about your sword at dinner?"

"I think he was drunk." He answered. "He had been drinking all afternoon and all through dinner. I have to say, even with all his faults I prefer him to your aunt Rose."

"I've never met her." Toph said, letting him change the subject. "Mother loves her it's me she can't stand."

"Don't be silly. Your mother loves you." He insisted. "She just hasn't figured out that what makes her happy doesn't make you happy. But she will eventually."

"I doubt it." She insisted, her hands curling into fists and her teeth grinding together. "I just don't want to turn into her when I get older."

Talking about her mother had that effect on her.

"Don't worry you won't." He comforted her, with a little hug.

"This party is going to be awful!" Toph told him.

"Nahh… No matter what they have set up, the two of us will have fun. I guarantee it." He reassured her. "We'll get Rong drunk and make him tell dirty stories about us."

"Yeah!" She laughed. "That would be fun and mother would have a fit."

"See it will all be ok. Besides Aang and Katara and your friends will be there. It will be a good time." He told her.

"I guess." She grudgingly admitted, though she didn't sound that positive.

"Move over." He told her pushing her over onto the free area of the bed.

"Why?" She asked suspiciously.

"Cause I wan'ta give you a back rub." He said.

"Well I guess that's ok." She responded lying on her stomach.

Kneeling, he straddled her thighs. He started by working the tension out of her neck. Then to the shoulders, down her back to her hips, and then back up again. It was long and luxurious and wonderful. He finished with a glorious back scratch that would have had her purring, except that she was nearly unconscious already.

"It will all be better tomorrow." He told her as he kissed her cheek. "Good night."

"Goorite." She mumbled as she curled up against his warmth, her head in the joint of his arm and shoulder.

He pulled the covers over the two of them, wrapped his arms around her, and soon joined her in sleep.

* * *

To be continued:

* * *

**Disclaimer:** "Avatar the Last Airbender" the characters and the world were created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and owned by Nickelodeon and Viacom or Paramount or some huge corporation. This is purely a work of fan fiction because I wanted to play in their world and I love the characters that they created.

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Author's notes:

Hi All,

Too many months between updates. I apologize profusely. And this chapter is so long I hope it doesn't get tedious for you, if anybody is still reading this story.

I hope the flash backs of Suki and Ty Lee work. I wanted to give some background so you will know what's happening when Sokka eventually reads Suki's letter in the next chapter.

Yes you can expect some excerpts from "The Dark Twins" by Lee Loo Ling in the coming chapters.

And no, I am Colonel Hu is not going to go into detail about the contest he entered.

And yes things are about to get interesting in Ba Sing Se.

Thanks so much for reading.

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FanART; Sicksketch has done some wonderful sketches over on Tumblr. Please take a look, just search under the tag "ill walk you home" and you will find them.

There is also fanart for the story on DeviantArt; Totalfanboy21 has a great picture of an older Toph and Sokka inspired by the story and Abi-chan14 and Cutubulla as well as Kawayui-Kage have created Fanart for the story. I am really honored that talented artists have liked the story so much that they have actually made art based on it. Please check them out.

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Thank you all so much for sticking with my story.

I have to thank everyone for the really generous and kind reviews. You guys keep me going and I really appreciate all the support. I always try to answer all reviews. If I missed any one please forgive me.

I'd like to thank all the guest reviewers for their criticism and support. I really am trying to get better at this and need all the help I can get.

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Once again thank you to all those who have added this story to their alerts and especially their favorites, and a very special thank you to all who have added me to your author alerts and favorites. That is a real honor for me. I hope I have not disappointed you with this chapter.

Thank you to all for reading

All comments and/or criticisms are more than welcome.


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